The Christian and Secular Government
Title: The Christian and Secular Government
Part: 23 of 27 Romans Series
Reading: Romans 13:1-7
Now Romans Chapter 13, let me read the first seven verses. Romans 13, and we're going to talk today about the Christian and secular government. I know it doesn't sound very exciting, but it is important that we understand what Paul has to say about that here in these verses. Romans 13:1-7,
"Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted. And those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. For rulers hold no terror for those who do right but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from the fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and he will commend you. For he is God's servant to do you good. But if you do wrong, be afraid. For he does not bear the sword for nothing, he is God's servant and agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrong doer.
Therefore, it is necessary to submit the authorities. Not only because of possible punishment, but also because of conscience. This is also why you pay taxes for the authorities of God's servants who give their full time to governing. Give everyone what you owe him: If you owe taxes, pay taxes. If revenue, then revenue. If respect, then respect. If honour, then honour."
And we'll only read that far, and we'll pick up the rest of that chapter on another occasion. But in going through Romans, we've been hitting some of the high spots of Christian doctrine and Christian truth.
And last Sunday, we looked in Chapter 12 where having told the people to present their bodies as living sacrifices to God, he then talks about that relationship of surrender to God does not mean the Christian life is just an individualistic relationship, God and me, but we are incorporated into a body, - the church of Jesus Christ - and the Christian life is not just liberating God and me, but God and me and the rest of you.
And we talked about that because Paul talks about the church there is being the body. We have different gifts, we're different to one, we are dependent on one another.
But now in chapter 13, he talks about the Christian Church itself being part of a bigger and wider community. And that is, it is part of the state which God has also ordained. And so, I want to look at this whole theme of the Christian and secular government, our relationship to secular government. But first one to ask the question, why does Paul write about this at this point? As I've already indicated, he's taken us to great heights in Romans.
He's talked about our reconciliation to God. He's talked about our freedom from sin. He's talked about our union with Christ. He's talked about the in dwelling of the holy spirit who lives in us and works through us. He's exhorted us to present our borders as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God and how that then we discover the will of God to be good and perfect and acceptable. And all of that are wonderful issues. They are rich issues.
And now he seems to come down to earth pretty firmly by talking about political government and what our relationship is to that. And it comes as a bit of an anti-climax as you go through this book. In fact, some scholars have concluded. It's an insertion into the book of Romans not written originally by Paul, but there's no good reason for holding to that or believing that. What is evident is that Paul consider this important. And I'll tell you why he considered it as important.
You see there's some background tensions that we need to understand and will help us understand this. You see, there were those who became very excited about being a Christian, about spiritual issues, but as a result, they had concluded that to be truly spiritual means that you become detached from certain things in the world.
For instance, we find in 1 Timothy 4, there were some who are teaching, "If you are really spiritual, you won't marry because it's preferable," they said, "To remain single and not to marry." In 1 Corinthians 7, if you're really spiritual, you won't even think about sex. And he's writing about married couples, not even thinking about sex if you're really spiritual. He was saying, "No, no. Don't do that."
And there were those who are saying that if you are spiritual, you have nothing to do with secular government. And that's why several times it was necessary in the New Testament to write to these new Christians and say, "You better relate well to the governments under whose authority you live."
For instance, in the book of Titus 3, Paul says to Titus, "Remind the people to be subject to rulers and authorities and to be obedient to them." Why? Because some were saying, "This doesn't matter anymore." In 1 Peter 2:13-14, Peter writes, "Submit yourself for the Lord's sake to every authority instituted among men, whether it's the king, that's the Supreme commander, or the governors." Now Peter was writing that letter, in a time of great persecution against the church.
And he's saying, "You remind the people, submit yourselves to every authority and live in submission to it." Now this is not a common problem today. In fact, if there's a problem today, it's the reverse, there is no distinction between what we might call worldly pursuits very often and Godly pursuits. But by and large, there isn't a problem with this today, though some do take a detached view of state and government.
I grew up in a background where that was the general view of things. That if you are a Christian, you didn't get involved in affairs of the state. It was based on a couple of verses. For instance, Philippians 3:20 says, "Our citizenship is in heaven." And the deduction from that statement that I grew up with was therefore, your citizenship is not on earth. Jesus said in John 18, "My kingdom is not of this world." And so the induction was, don't get involved in this world.
So, in the church in which I grew up, most people there would not vote. They wouldn't participate in government at any level. They wouldn't fight for their country. And I remember the first time I saw a Christian leaving a polling booth, I was in my mid-teens, and I was shocked that a Christian had been voting for a government.
Now I happen to tell you, I've never held that view though that was the background in which I grew up. You'll get some weird ideas about my background when I refer to it from time to time, it all seems to be pretty, well it was, pretty legalistic.
But that was their understanding, that if our is in heaven, it's not on earth. My father has never voted an election in his life. My mother did once without my father knowing. She was very ambitious and brave but on principle. But Christians are involved in the secular world, and we do relate to the governments that exist in our countries.
Now I want to talk about three things from these verses to you. First of all, government is ordained by God. We'll talk about that for a few minutes. Secondly, government is to be obeyed by us. We'll talk about that for a few minutes. And thirdly, government is to operate for our good. That's the third thing that Paul says in these verses.
Government is Ordained by God
First of all, government is ordained by God. Let me read you some extracts here from verse one first of all, "There is no authority except that which God has established." That's in the first part of verse one. Second part of verse one, "The authorities that exist have been established by God."
Verse two, "He who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted." Verse four, "He, the authority is God’s servant to do you good." Verse six, "The authorities are God's servants." And what Paul is teaching there is that human government is actually a divine ordinance instituted by God, actually, right back in the very beginning. Because in the book of Genesis, when God created, the first thing he said of humanity, Genesis 1:26, "Let us make man in our image and our likeness and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock and over all the earth and over all the creatures that move along the ground."
As the king James words, "There is God gave human beings dominion over the earth, the right and the responsibility to rule over the earth." In Psalm 8:6, David is asking, "What does man, what does God make much of man?" And he says this, "You made him ruler over the works of your hands. You put everything under his feet."
God ordained, it's a divine ordinance that we should rule, that there should be governments and authority in the affairs of human beings. And that's why he says here in chapter 13, "The authorities that exist have been established by God." Now I need to ask the question, what exactly does he mean by that?
The authorities have been established by God. Does it mean that individual personalities who exercise jurisdiction in each nation have been personally appointed by God? So, the prime minister is God's choice, a prime minister.
The president of a country is God's choice of president? The king is God's choice of king? The queen is God's choice of queen? In other words, everyone has been personally pointed to office by God. I think not. I don't think that's what Paul is meaning. I'll tell you why.
That would give sanction of course, to every evil despot in the world. That would give sanction to every successful Coup d'état, which is a rebellion against authority in the first instance. That would give divine approval of every election results.
What this means is that the principle of government is God ordained. That is that the fact of government is a God ordained structure for society. Now how the details of government work out is a human affair.
So, if we live in a democracy, then the prime minister or the president is determined by the electorate. If you live in a monarchy, the king or the queen is determined by birth. If you live in a dictatorship, the leader is usually self-appointed or appointed, not elected, by a very select group of people. And we may have good government, or we may have bad government.
That's the human choice. We have the government we choose. But it's the principle of government that is God ordained, that there should be government, is what God has ordained. And therefore, we ought to have a constructive view of the state.
The state is not the enemy of God. It is God's agent, Paul says several times, it's primary purpose of course, is maintaining social order by providing security to the nation.
That's one of its chief responsibilities by the implementing and the administration of justice in a nation that's another of its prime responsibilities, and by facilitating the wellbeing of its people. And that is to ensure education, healthcare, law and order and that kind of thing.
And it's the principle that is God ordained, but there are limits to the role of government, the Bible tell us. So, Jesus said in Matthew 22:21, "Render to Caesar that which is Caesar's and to God what is God's." In other words, there are some things that belong to Caesar, the Roman emperor, and if they belong to Caesar, give them to him. But there are other things that belong to God, he indicates there., and has nothing to do with Caesar.
Now, Caesar does not hold jurisdiction over what belongs to God. I mean, what belongs to God, it's our worship of him, that the government should have no involvement in that. Our freedom to obey him. And this of course is a cherish freedom in our democratic nations, that we are free to worship and to obey. These are things that belong to God.
But there are things that belong to Caesar. And Paul mentions a few of them here in these verses. Let me point them at you. He talks about the right to punish. It says, "Rulers hold no terror for those who do right. But for those who do wrong.”
Do you want to be free from the fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and he will commend you," that's verse three. And verse four says, "For he is God's servant to do you good, but if you do wrong, be afraid. He does not bear the sword for nothing, he is God's servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrong doer."
Now this is part of the responsibility of government, to punish the wrongdoing, to establish laws, to create the boundaries that make for the security of the peoples living within each nation and to have some form of punishment that addresses those who violate those boundaries, those laws. And this is a solemn responsibility of the state.
We may wish it were not necessarily, but it is. And we'll talk a bit more about that a bit later on as well. Secondly says Paul, "Though government has the right to taxation," in verse six he says, "This is why you pay taxes for the authorities of God servants who give their full time to governing.” Governments have the right to impose taxes and as citizens, we have the responsibility to pay them.
Now, if you were here the day that we had the team that went on a mission team in January for three weeks overseas, when they came back and reported back, one of them said, "One of the things I learned in my time away is a new respect for my taxes here in Canada, because I appreciate the infrastructure that we have that wasn't in existence in the country that we spent time in.”
And so, taxes are good and necessary." You remember that Jesus paid his taxes. He fished and got a fish with a coin in his mouth, which is very convenient. But he paid his taxes, and he told his disciples to pay their taxes and give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar.
But the third thing, "Government have a right to," says Paul here, "Right to punish, a right to taxation. They have a right to respect." In verse seven, "Give everyone what you owe him. If you owe taxes, pay taxes."
By the way, the chairman of our governance council is a tax collector, so we treat him very kindly, and he has a vested interest in this. That's where he gets his income from. So, if you owe taxes, pay taxes. If revenue, then revenue. If respect, then respect.
If honour, then honour. Leadership deserves respect. Now, some cultures are much more respectful than others. Some of you have come into the Western culture where respect perhaps is less than is in some cultures that you have come from.
Though, actually having come here from British, and we find a greater sense of respect here than we were experiencing in Britain which is marvellous. And respect according to my dictionary is differential esteem towards a person.
And respect is a Christian virtue. Recognizing their people whose job is not always good. Leadership is never always comfortable. Government is never easy. That we respect them, and they're entitled to our respect and part of our respect is our submission to them.
And as we're told to in 1 Timothy, "Are praying for them." And as Christians, we recognize those responsibilities of government because as Paul says there, "God's servants and we live as good citizens within the nation." So that's my first point from what Paul has to say here, government is ordained by God.
The Government is to be Obeyed by Us
The second point is government is to be obeyed by us. See chapter 13, verse one says, "Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities." Verse five says, "Therefore it is necessary to submit to the authorities." And the word he uses there on two occasions is the word submit.
This is not an option, this is an imperative, a responsibility. Now elsewhere, the New Testament states this clearly in Titus 3:1, "Remind the people to be subject to rulers and authorities and to be obedient, to be ready to do whatever is good."
Now he says, "Be subject, subject yourself to the authority and obey them." 1 Peter 2:13 also says, "Submit yourself for the Lord's sake to every authority in instituted among men." Whether it's king or governors or whatever.
Now this is the general instruction to us. But what about the times when we cannot in good conscience obey the state authorities? It's interesting that in chapter 13:5, Paul says, "It is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also because of conscience," that is your conscience should steer you to submission to the government.
But what about times when your conscience tells you, you cannot obey the laws of a particular government? Because its laws violate your sense of conscience.
What if you have pacifist for instance, in a time of conscription? What about in nations when possessing Bibles is illegal as it is in some countries of the world? And your conscience says, "I'm not free to obey this command." Or when it is illegal to evangelize as it isn't some parts of the world. And you say, "My conscience does not allow me to submit to this command." Is civil disobedience ever possible?
Well, there're some cases of civil disobedience in the Bible. Let me give you four of them. One is in the book of Exodus 1, "When the population of the Israelites slaves had multiplied so much that the Egyptians saw them as a threat, and they decreed that the midwives at the birth of Israelite babies should take any male child and put it to death preserving only the female children."
That was of course, a barbaric instruction given by the Egyptian government and the Pharaoh. But it says in Exodus 1:17 that, "The midwives however, feared God and they did not do what the king of Egypt had told them to do." They let the boys live.
Now, they feared God and therefore disobeyed the instruction to kill baby boys. Now I know they marvellously thwarted Pharaoh's purpose because when Moses came to lead his contemporaries out of Egypt, eventually there were 600,000 fighting men.
Those were baby boys who got away earlier, who should have been killed in that awful massacre that was demanded. So that's one instance of disobeying the authority.
Let me give you a second. Disobedience to civil authority is in Daniel 3 when King Nebuchadnezzar, you remember the Babylonian king who had annexed Israel, Judah, taken the people into exile and he issued an edict that all his subjects must fall down and worship his golden image.
It was 30 meters high. It was three meters wide. But there were three Jewish men who'd been brought as captive from Judah who had been promoted to the Babylonian ranks because of their skills and their wisdom.
Their names were Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. And you remember the story, how they refused to obey and refused to bow down before this golden image and consequently, they were thrown into fiery furnace, you remember, for their trouble.
There's a third case of civil disobedience in Daniel 6, this time concerning Daniel and king Darius who was the first Persian king who reigned after the Babylonian empire had disintegrated. And he issued a decree that for 30 days, I quote, "No one should pray to any God or man except Darius."
And Daniel, who was then an older man, refused to obey. He persisted in his practice of praying three times a day with an open window in full view of his neighbours. And for his trouble, you remember, was thrown into a den of lions with the hope that they would devour him.
The fourth act of civil disobedience is in Acts 4, where the Sanhedrin Council, which was the highest Jewish council in Israel, they had been responsible for recommending the death of Jesus a few weeks before and now with the apostles preaching in Jerusalem, it says, "That they called them before the Sanhedrin Council, and they commanded them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus." That was their command.
They had that authority. Peter's response was, "Judge for yourselves, whether it's right in God's sight to obey you rather than God, if we cannot help speaking about what we've seen and heard."
And in the next chapter, Acts 5, they're brought again before the Sanhedrin Council and they were rebuked for disobeying their orders. They said, "We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name, yet you fill Jerusalem with your teaching." And Peter's response this time was, "We must obey God rather than men." Now, here are cases of people who felt at Liberty because of conscience to go against authority.
In fact, they engaged in ranked disobedience to authority. Now, how do we reconcile this with Paul's instruction, we say, "Well, there's a conscience clause let out here, obey the government generally but if your conscious doesn't let you well, just do what you think is right."
In each case, interestingly, these people were instructed to do that, which was in disobedience to God and so their motive, their response was not one of defiance of the government, their response is one of submission to God. And that's important to recognize the difference. Wasn't defiance of the government, it was submission to what God had already told them.
But where we reconcile this, I suggest you with Paul's instruction to live in submission to authority, is that our submission to government is such that if in good conscience we cannot obey the government or a particular law of our government, then our submission to the government is such that we accept the consequences of our disobedience without complaint.
In other words, our submission to the government is such, if we disobey, we recognize the right of the government then to punish us without complaint.
And actually, you go back to these stories in the Bible. We don't have any details of how the midwives were called to account in Exodus, but Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were thrown in fiery furnace, they didn't resist, nor did they complain, they said, "We will do it. Our God may preserve us, if he doesn't, we still stand faithful to him."
But they accepted the consequence of their disobedience. Daniel accepted the consequences of his refusal to not pray to God and was thrown into the den of lions again, without complaint.
Peter and John and the other apostles as a result of their disobedience, were thrown into jail but not for one moment was there any sense that they resisted their arrest or complained about it and said, "You have no right to do this." They recognized they had a right to do that.
They had violated the authority and the principal authority is God ordained. In other words, there's no valid justification for anarchy at any point. If we do disobey, we live with the consequences of our disobedience. In fact, most of the early apostles as you know, probably with the only exception of John, were murdered because of their obedience to God over against the instructions of the state. And that's why they were murdered, put to death in some cases, by the state.
Now I had to face this as a very real issue myself when I was a student because a friend and I decided that during our summer vacation, and we did this for two summers, we'd like to help some of the suffering Christians in the communist world in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.
And we decided to smuggle Bibles into a number of Eastern European countries, which we did. We bought an old car; we had a false bottom put under the car. So, it sat very low on the ground, but it was stuffed with literature.
We had false compartments placed in the car at different places. And we took hundreds of Bibles, the new testaments. But we several resolutions before we went, just the two of us. We decided these three things, we would do everything we could to conceal our purpose. That was the first thing we decided.
Secondly, we would answer every question asked of us at the border controls and we would never lie. We might be evasive, but we'd never lie. And if they said, "Do you have Bibles?" And we did, we'd say, "Yes." We decided we'd do that in advance. And the third thing we decided was, if we get caught, we will accept the consequences knowing we have no grounds for complaining.
We know what we'd doing, we're breaking their laws. We had several occasions when cars in front of us were searched. One car, I remember, everything in the car was taken out, every suitcase opened on the side, and everything taken out and we were behind them.
And then the car behind couple of immigration authorities asked the people to take their stuff out of the car. And then an immigration man came to us and just called us with his finger and just sent us right through not even looking to what we had in our car.
And the closest shaves is when they asked us to write down on a piece of paper, everything we were carrying into the country.
So we began to write a list of everything we had. We made the list, a long list down about six sheets of paper. We wrote in untidy handwriting, and we wrote at the bottom of this long, long list, 60 Bibles, 44 new testaments.
So, we handed the list, they began to read the top of the list and just read through it and then went very quickly. Second and third page, "That's fine, off you go." By the time they got to the end of the page, they're bored. We only got refused to entry once, that was in Czechoslovakia, and they gave us a big red stamp saying that we were not longer welcome in the country, and we actually had nothing in the car on that occasion. We were driving home, going through checks of back to meet some Christians in East Germany.
They asked us some difficult questions, were a bit suspicious, "What have you been doing and where have you been?" And so, I eventually said, "We actually had been visiting in Romania, some friends of ours." "Where'd you meet these friends?"
"Well, we met them in Romania." "How were they friends of you when you met them in Romania?" "Well, they became friends." But how did you know you're going to find them?" "Because somebody gave us their address." "What were these friends doing?"
"Well, they're just being people." "Did you leave them anything?" "Yes." "What did you leave them?" "Some English books." Because we had some English books, but we had Romanian Bibles.
"Anything else?" "Well yeah, we let them couple Romanian books as well." "What the books about?" "Well, they're books about life." Said, "We don't like this. We think you are up to something rather strange. I'm sorry. You cannot come in." To which I go I'm like, "Yeah."
But it was okay because we weren't going to drop anything there anyway. But every other occasion, we experienced God protecting us and taking us through.
But the point and I think we are right to have agreed this, that if we get caught, we accept the consequences. And I think that's what it means to be in submission to authority.
If there are times when you feel in good conscience before God, my obedience to God supersedes as it does my obedience to the state, when those two commands are in conflict, I disobey but recognizing the right of government to exercise its jurisdiction and punish me accordingly, if that's what it chooses to do.
And it seems to me that was the attitude of the early church. And you know that for centuries, for three centuries anyway, the church pretty well lived outside the protection of the law, the Roman law, and many Christians lost their lives, but you never find any complaint about the government.
They don't have the right to do this, they recognize it's because of our faithfulness to Christ, they have chosen to exercise this right, and we submit ourselves to the authorities.
Government is to Operate for our Good
Government is ordained by God is the first point. Government is obeyed by us, is the second point. Government is to operate for our good, is the third point. You see verse three and four, let me read this again, "Rulers hold no terror for those who do right but for those who do wrong.
Do you want to be free from the one in authority? Then do what is right and he will commend you for he's God servant to do you good." Now then that text ought to be across every government building in Canada and every other part of the world.
Government is God's servant to do you good. What is necessary for the good of the nation. But if you do wrong, be afraid. He does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God's servant and agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoing.
Government is to operate for the good of its people and part of operating for the good of its people means that there is recourse to punishment when we don't conform to what is required of us for a good, wholesome, healthy society.
Now punishment is not a nice word. It doesn't sound like a nice word but actually, it's a very wholesome word. Don't relegate the idea of punishment or the dark ages or to the period of un-enlightenment.
Punishment actually gives us dignity because it recognizes responsibility. I'm not talking about vindictive acts of aggression, of course. But punishment, consequences for stepping over the line of what is required. You know in family life; you need to build boundaries. And within those boundaries, children are free to do whatever they want within the boundaries.
But as they go over the boundary, there are consequences. And of course, as the children grow, the boundaries get pushed out further and further until they disappear. At least they think they disappear. And punishment gives dignity. Gives dignity because it is affirming a sense of responsibility.
And when God gave us responsibility, as he did, he also gave us accountability. And if there was no punishment, there could be no real responsibility.
Now who has a responsibility to punish? Let me suggest three. God has given government first of all, the responsibility to punish. It may be national government, it may be authority in a workplace, it may be authority in an educational establishment.
And I suggest that the punishment has four values. It helps define and reinforce the values of that particular community and those need to be reinforced. It affirms the responsibility of the individual by calling them to account. It satisfies the need for redress, and there is the need for redress in any community.
That's one of the important things about justice, that the community feels it's been done. And fourthly, it encourages change behaviour because many of us as the scripture tells us, are changed by discipline. So, God has given the government the responsibility to punish.
Secondly, God has given parents the responsibility to punish. Children who grew up in an environment where bad action to not bring consequences and punishment, do not usually grow up with a healthy sense of self-esteem and a sense of significance and value.
As parents, we dislike disciplining and punishing our children and if we enjoyed it, we would have a big problem. We don't like it. None of us enjoy punishing children when that is necessary. But the times when we do so for their good, and the book of Proverbs says a lot about this. I'll read you one verse.
It talks about a man whose life ends in chaos, and it says, "At the end of your life, you're grown when your flesh and body are spent and you'll say, 'How I hated discipline, how my heart spurned correction.'" And the book of Proverbs says, "It's a fool that spurns correction." And this means I hated discipline when I was young as a result, when I'm old, my life is fallen apart. I'm insecure. I don't know right from wrong.
Hebrews chapter 12:11 says, no discipline seems pleasant at the time but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. You see discipline is dealing with the long-term production of a harvest, he says there, of righteousness. And so, parents need to discipline their children.
God has a Right to Punish
But God has given himself thirdly, the right to punish, the responsibility to punish. He's given it to governments, he's given it to parents, and he's given it to himself. That's why the scripture talks about a judgment seat of Christ. In the next chapter, Romans 14:10, "We will all stand before God's judgment seat," writes Paul.
Later in 2 Corinthians 5:10, "We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ that each one may receive what is due to him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad." This is one of the things which he gives to you and to me as human beings, dignity that one day we stand accountable before God. Otherwise, we don't matter.
Otherwise, what we do doesn't matter. Otherwise, how we behave doesn't matter. Otherwise, you yourself don't matter. And this says coming a judgment day and there is. And that's why when we are judged and disciplined and punished by our parents, by the authorities, God has set into society. We learn the benefits from it. That one day we're going to stand before God as our judge.
In fact punishment, it's not a nice word as I say, punishment lies at the very heart of the Christian gospel. Because the cross is actually all about punishment. Let me read you a verse which tells us that.
In Isaiah 53:5, speaking prophetically says of Christ,
"He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our inequities. The punishment that brought us peace was upon him and by his wounds, we are healed."
What actually happened on the cross, God, the judge poured out his judgment on someone who is acting as your substitute and mine.
And when you and I come to Christ in repentance and in humility and recognize our own need and guilt. And we say, "Lord, I deserve your judgment, but I want to thank you for the cross." That is God punishing sin because punishment is a divine attribute, to punish. Because of the respect and the dignity and the responsibility that God gives to every human being.
It's the integrity of God that demands justice be done. God, who is himself ordered, has ordered his creation, we know it's a fallen world, we know we get bad governments, there are bad governments and in democracy, let's only blame ourselves for that, by the way, if that's what we feel.
But there are other parts of the world with bad governments and not much seems to be able to be done about it by the people who are living under that government. But although they're bad governments and good governments, God ordained the principle of government.
We might be accountable, we might live with a sense of responsibility, we might be given dignity of there being consequences when our actions are wrong and consequence, when our actions are right. We reap the benefits of doing what is good and the cons from doing what is wrong.
So Paul is saying here, "It's wonderful to be reconciled to God, to be forgiven, to be justified by faith, to be brought into union with Christ, to be endured by the holy spirit, to surrender yourself, your body, to Christ all."
This is what he's been teaching earlier parts of the charter, but don't let that make you think that then you become somehow apart from the affairs of this world. We live in them, and we live under authority.
Government is ordained by God. Government is to be obeyed by us and government is to operate for our good, but where we are wrong, it bears the sword, he says, "An agent of God's wrath, God's judgment."
And so, we of all people need to be citizens that give respect and submission to government and the church of Jesus Christ needs to model that and to demonstrate that.
Title: The Christian and Secular Government
Part: 23 of 27 Romans Series
Reading: Romans 13:1-7
Now Romans Chapter 13, let me read the first seven verses. Romans 13, and we're going to talk today about the Christian and secular government. I know it doesn't sound very exciting, but it is important that we understand what Paul has to say about that here in these verses. Romans 13:1-7,
"Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted. And those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. For rulers hold no terror for those who do right but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from the fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and he will commend you. For he is God's servant to do you good. But if you do wrong, be afraid. For he does not bear the sword for nothing, he is God's servant and agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrong doer.
Therefore, it is necessary to submit the authorities. Not only because of possible punishment, but also because of conscience. This is also why you pay taxes for the authorities of God's servants who give their full time to governing. Give everyone what you owe him: If you owe taxes, pay taxes. If revenue, then revenue. If respect, then respect. If honour, then honour."
And we'll only read that far, and we'll pick up the rest of that chapter on another occasion. But in going through Romans, we've been hitting some of the high spots of Christian doctrine and Christian truth.
And last Sunday, we looked in Chapter 12 where having told the people to present their bodies as living sacrifices to God, he then talks about that relationship of surrender to God does not mean the Christian life is just an individualistic relationship, God and me, but we are incorporated into a body, - the church of Jesus Christ - and the Christian life is not just liberating God and me, but God and me and the rest of you.
And we talked about that because Paul talks about the church there is being the body. We have different gifts, we're different to one, we are dependent on one another.
But now in chapter 13, he talks about the Christian Church itself being part of a bigger and wider community. And that is, it is part of the state which God has also ordained. And so, I want to look at this whole theme of the Christian and secular government, our relationship to secular government. But first one to ask the question, why does Paul write about this at this point? As I've already indicated, he's taken us to great heights in Romans.
He's talked about our reconciliation to God. He's talked about our freedom from sin. He's talked about our union with Christ. He's talked about the in dwelling of the holy spirit who lives in us and works through us. He's exhorted us to present our borders as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God and how that then we discover the will of God to be good and perfect and acceptable. And all of that are wonderful issues. They are rich issues.
And now he seems to come down to earth pretty firmly by talking about political government and what our relationship is to that. And it comes as a bit of an anti-climax as you go through this book. In fact, some scholars have concluded. It's an insertion into the book of Romans not written originally by Paul, but there's no good reason for holding to that or believing that. What is evident is that Paul consider this important. And I'll tell you why he considered it as important.
You see there's some background tensions that we need to understand and will help us understand this. You see, there were those who became very excited about being a Christian, about spiritual issues, but as a result, they had concluded that to be truly spiritual means that you become detached from certain things in the world.
For instance, we find in 1 Timothy 4, there were some who are teaching, "If you are really spiritual, you won't marry because it's preferable," they said, "To remain single and not to marry." In 1 Corinthians 7, if you're really spiritual, you won't even think about sex. And he's writing about married couples, not even thinking about sex if you're really spiritual. He was saying, "No, no. Don't do that."
And there were those who are saying that if you are spiritual, you have nothing to do with secular government. And that's why several times it was necessary in the New Testament to write to these new Christians and say, "You better relate well to the governments under whose authority you live."
For instance, in the book of Titus 3, Paul says to Titus, "Remind the people to be subject to rulers and authorities and to be obedient to them." Why? Because some were saying, "This doesn't matter anymore." In 1 Peter 2:13-14, Peter writes, "Submit yourself for the Lord's sake to every authority instituted among men, whether it's the king, that's the Supreme commander, or the governors." Now Peter was writing that letter, in a time of great persecution against the church.
And he's saying, "You remind the people, submit yourselves to every authority and live in submission to it." Now this is not a common problem today. In fact, if there's a problem today, it's the reverse, there is no distinction between what we might call worldly pursuits very often and Godly pursuits. But by and large, there isn't a problem with this today, though some do take a detached view of state and government.
I grew up in a background where that was the general view of things. That if you are a Christian, you didn't get involved in affairs of the state. It was based on a couple of verses. For instance, Philippians 3:20 says, "Our citizenship is in heaven." And the deduction from that statement that I grew up with was therefore, your citizenship is not on earth. Jesus said in John 18, "My kingdom is not of this world." And so the induction was, don't get involved in this world.
So, in the church in which I grew up, most people there would not vote. They wouldn't participate in government at any level. They wouldn't fight for their country. And I remember the first time I saw a Christian leaving a polling booth, I was in my mid-teens, and I was shocked that a Christian had been voting for a government.
Now I happen to tell you, I've never held that view though that was the background in which I grew up. You'll get some weird ideas about my background when I refer to it from time to time, it all seems to be pretty, well it was, pretty legalistic.
But that was their understanding, that if our is in heaven, it's not on earth. My father has never voted an election in his life. My mother did once without my father knowing. She was very ambitious and brave but on principle. But Christians are involved in the secular world, and we do relate to the governments that exist in our countries.
Now I want to talk about three things from these verses to you. First of all, government is ordained by God. We'll talk about that for a few minutes. Secondly, government is to be obeyed by us. We'll talk about that for a few minutes. And thirdly, government is to operate for our good. That's the third thing that Paul says in these verses.
Government is Ordained by God
First of all, government is ordained by God. Let me read you some extracts here from verse one first of all, "There is no authority except that which God has established." That's in the first part of verse one. Second part of verse one, "The authorities that exist have been established by God."
Verse two, "He who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted." Verse four, "He, the authority is God’s servant to do you good." Verse six, "The authorities are God's servants." And what Paul is teaching there is that human government is actually a divine ordinance instituted by God, actually, right back in the very beginning. Because in the book of Genesis, when God created, the first thing he said of humanity, Genesis 1:26, "Let us make man in our image and our likeness and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock and over all the earth and over all the creatures that move along the ground."
As the king James words, "There is God gave human beings dominion over the earth, the right and the responsibility to rule over the earth." In Psalm 8:6, David is asking, "What does man, what does God make much of man?" And he says this, "You made him ruler over the works of your hands. You put everything under his feet."
God ordained, it's a divine ordinance that we should rule, that there should be governments and authority in the affairs of human beings. And that's why he says here in chapter 13, "The authorities that exist have been established by God." Now I need to ask the question, what exactly does he mean by that?
The authorities have been established by God. Does it mean that individual personalities who exercise jurisdiction in each nation have been personally appointed by God? So, the prime minister is God's choice, a prime minister.
The president of a country is God's choice of president? The king is God's choice of king? The queen is God's choice of queen? In other words, everyone has been personally pointed to office by God. I think not. I don't think that's what Paul is meaning. I'll tell you why.
That would give sanction of course, to every evil despot in the world. That would give sanction to every successful Coup d'état, which is a rebellion against authority in the first instance. That would give divine approval of every election results.
What this means is that the principle of government is God ordained. That is that the fact of government is a God ordained structure for society. Now how the details of government work out is a human affair.
So, if we live in a democracy, then the prime minister or the president is determined by the electorate. If you live in a monarchy, the king or the queen is determined by birth. If you live in a dictatorship, the leader is usually self-appointed or appointed, not elected, by a very select group of people. And we may have good government, or we may have bad government.
That's the human choice. We have the government we choose. But it's the principle of government that is God ordained, that there should be government, is what God has ordained. And therefore, we ought to have a constructive view of the state.
The state is not the enemy of God. It is God's agent, Paul says several times, it's primary purpose of course, is maintaining social order by providing security to the nation.
That's one of its chief responsibilities by the implementing and the administration of justice in a nation that's another of its prime responsibilities, and by facilitating the wellbeing of its people. And that is to ensure education, healthcare, law and order and that kind of thing.
And it's the principle that is God ordained, but there are limits to the role of government, the Bible tell us. So, Jesus said in Matthew 22:21, "Render to Caesar that which is Caesar's and to God what is God's." In other words, there are some things that belong to Caesar, the Roman emperor, and if they belong to Caesar, give them to him. But there are other things that belong to God, he indicates there., and has nothing to do with Caesar.
Now, Caesar does not hold jurisdiction over what belongs to God. I mean, what belongs to God, it's our worship of him, that the government should have no involvement in that. Our freedom to obey him. And this of course is a cherish freedom in our democratic nations, that we are free to worship and to obey. These are things that belong to God.
But there are things that belong to Caesar. And Paul mentions a few of them here in these verses. Let me point them at you. He talks about the right to punish. It says, "Rulers hold no terror for those who do right. But for those who do wrong.”
Do you want to be free from the fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and he will commend you," that's verse three. And verse four says, "For he is God's servant to do you good, but if you do wrong, be afraid. He does not bear the sword for nothing, he is God's servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrong doer."
Now this is part of the responsibility of government, to punish the wrongdoing, to establish laws, to create the boundaries that make for the security of the peoples living within each nation and to have some form of punishment that addresses those who violate those boundaries, those laws. And this is a solemn responsibility of the state.
We may wish it were not necessarily, but it is. And we'll talk a bit more about that a bit later on as well. Secondly says Paul, "Though government has the right to taxation," in verse six he says, "This is why you pay taxes for the authorities of God servants who give their full time to governing.” Governments have the right to impose taxes and as citizens, we have the responsibility to pay them.
Now, if you were here the day that we had the team that went on a mission team in January for three weeks overseas, when they came back and reported back, one of them said, "One of the things I learned in my time away is a new respect for my taxes here in Canada, because I appreciate the infrastructure that we have that wasn't in existence in the country that we spent time in.”
And so, taxes are good and necessary." You remember that Jesus paid his taxes. He fished and got a fish with a coin in his mouth, which is very convenient. But he paid his taxes, and he told his disciples to pay their taxes and give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar.
But the third thing, "Government have a right to," says Paul here, "Right to punish, a right to taxation. They have a right to respect." In verse seven, "Give everyone what you owe him. If you owe taxes, pay taxes."
By the way, the chairman of our governance council is a tax collector, so we treat him very kindly, and he has a vested interest in this. That's where he gets his income from. So, if you owe taxes, pay taxes. If revenue, then revenue. If respect, then respect.
If honour, then honour. Leadership deserves respect. Now, some cultures are much more respectful than others. Some of you have come into the Western culture where respect perhaps is less than is in some cultures that you have come from.
Though, actually having come here from British, and we find a greater sense of respect here than we were experiencing in Britain which is marvellous. And respect according to my dictionary is differential esteem towards a person.
And respect is a Christian virtue. Recognizing their people whose job is not always good. Leadership is never always comfortable. Government is never easy. That we respect them, and they're entitled to our respect and part of our respect is our submission to them.
And as we're told to in 1 Timothy, "Are praying for them." And as Christians, we recognize those responsibilities of government because as Paul says there, "God's servants and we live as good citizens within the nation." So that's my first point from what Paul has to say here, government is ordained by God.
The Government is to be Obeyed by Us
The second point is government is to be obeyed by us. See chapter 13, verse one says, "Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities." Verse five says, "Therefore it is necessary to submit to the authorities." And the word he uses there on two occasions is the word submit.
This is not an option, this is an imperative, a responsibility. Now elsewhere, the New Testament states this clearly in Titus 3:1, "Remind the people to be subject to rulers and authorities and to be obedient, to be ready to do whatever is good."
Now he says, "Be subject, subject yourself to the authority and obey them." 1 Peter 2:13 also says, "Submit yourself for the Lord's sake to every authority in instituted among men." Whether it's king or governors or whatever.
Now this is the general instruction to us. But what about the times when we cannot in good conscience obey the state authorities? It's interesting that in chapter 13:5, Paul says, "It is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also because of conscience," that is your conscience should steer you to submission to the government.
But what about times when your conscience tells you, you cannot obey the laws of a particular government? Because its laws violate your sense of conscience.
What if you have pacifist for instance, in a time of conscription? What about in nations when possessing Bibles is illegal as it is in some countries of the world? And your conscience says, "I'm not free to obey this command." Or when it is illegal to evangelize as it isn't some parts of the world. And you say, "My conscience does not allow me to submit to this command." Is civil disobedience ever possible?
Well, there're some cases of civil disobedience in the Bible. Let me give you four of them. One is in the book of Exodus 1, "When the population of the Israelites slaves had multiplied so much that the Egyptians saw them as a threat, and they decreed that the midwives at the birth of Israelite babies should take any male child and put it to death preserving only the female children."
That was of course, a barbaric instruction given by the Egyptian government and the Pharaoh. But it says in Exodus 1:17 that, "The midwives however, feared God and they did not do what the king of Egypt had told them to do." They let the boys live.
Now, they feared God and therefore disobeyed the instruction to kill baby boys. Now I know they marvellously thwarted Pharaoh's purpose because when Moses came to lead his contemporaries out of Egypt, eventually there were 600,000 fighting men.
Those were baby boys who got away earlier, who should have been killed in that awful massacre that was demanded. So that's one instance of disobeying the authority.
Let me give you a second. Disobedience to civil authority is in Daniel 3 when King Nebuchadnezzar, you remember the Babylonian king who had annexed Israel, Judah, taken the people into exile and he issued an edict that all his subjects must fall down and worship his golden image.
It was 30 meters high. It was three meters wide. But there were three Jewish men who'd been brought as captive from Judah who had been promoted to the Babylonian ranks because of their skills and their wisdom.
Their names were Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. And you remember the story, how they refused to obey and refused to bow down before this golden image and consequently, they were thrown into fiery furnace, you remember, for their trouble.
There's a third case of civil disobedience in Daniel 6, this time concerning Daniel and king Darius who was the first Persian king who reigned after the Babylonian empire had disintegrated. And he issued a decree that for 30 days, I quote, "No one should pray to any God or man except Darius."
And Daniel, who was then an older man, refused to obey. He persisted in his practice of praying three times a day with an open window in full view of his neighbours. And for his trouble, you remember, was thrown into a den of lions with the hope that they would devour him.
The fourth act of civil disobedience is in Acts 4, where the Sanhedrin Council, which was the highest Jewish council in Israel, they had been responsible for recommending the death of Jesus a few weeks before and now with the apostles preaching in Jerusalem, it says, "That they called them before the Sanhedrin Council, and they commanded them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus." That was their command.
They had that authority. Peter's response was, "Judge for yourselves, whether it's right in God's sight to obey you rather than God, if we cannot help speaking about what we've seen and heard."
And in the next chapter, Acts 5, they're brought again before the Sanhedrin Council and they were rebuked for disobeying their orders. They said, "We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name, yet you fill Jerusalem with your teaching." And Peter's response this time was, "We must obey God rather than men." Now, here are cases of people who felt at Liberty because of conscience to go against authority.
In fact, they engaged in ranked disobedience to authority. Now, how do we reconcile this with Paul's instruction, we say, "Well, there's a conscience clause let out here, obey the government generally but if your conscious doesn't let you well, just do what you think is right."
In each case, interestingly, these people were instructed to do that, which was in disobedience to God and so their motive, their response was not one of defiance of the government, their response is one of submission to God. And that's important to recognize the difference. Wasn't defiance of the government, it was submission to what God had already told them.
But where we reconcile this, I suggest you with Paul's instruction to live in submission to authority, is that our submission to government is such that if in good conscience we cannot obey the government or a particular law of our government, then our submission to the government is such that we accept the consequences of our disobedience without complaint.
In other words, our submission to the government is such, if we disobey, we recognize the right of the government then to punish us without complaint.
And actually, you go back to these stories in the Bible. We don't have any details of how the midwives were called to account in Exodus, but Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were thrown in fiery furnace, they didn't resist, nor did they complain, they said, "We will do it. Our God may preserve us, if he doesn't, we still stand faithful to him."
But they accepted the consequence of their disobedience. Daniel accepted the consequences of his refusal to not pray to God and was thrown into the den of lions again, without complaint.
Peter and John and the other apostles as a result of their disobedience, were thrown into jail but not for one moment was there any sense that they resisted their arrest or complained about it and said, "You have no right to do this." They recognized they had a right to do that.
They had violated the authority and the principal authority is God ordained. In other words, there's no valid justification for anarchy at any point. If we do disobey, we live with the consequences of our disobedience. In fact, most of the early apostles as you know, probably with the only exception of John, were murdered because of their obedience to God over against the instructions of the state. And that's why they were murdered, put to death in some cases, by the state.
Now I had to face this as a very real issue myself when I was a student because a friend and I decided that during our summer vacation, and we did this for two summers, we'd like to help some of the suffering Christians in the communist world in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.
And we decided to smuggle Bibles into a number of Eastern European countries, which we did. We bought an old car; we had a false bottom put under the car. So, it sat very low on the ground, but it was stuffed with literature.
We had false compartments placed in the car at different places. And we took hundreds of Bibles, the new testaments. But we several resolutions before we went, just the two of us. We decided these three things, we would do everything we could to conceal our purpose. That was the first thing we decided.
Secondly, we would answer every question asked of us at the border controls and we would never lie. We might be evasive, but we'd never lie. And if they said, "Do you have Bibles?" And we did, we'd say, "Yes." We decided we'd do that in advance. And the third thing we decided was, if we get caught, we will accept the consequences knowing we have no grounds for complaining.
We know what we'd doing, we're breaking their laws. We had several occasions when cars in front of us were searched. One car, I remember, everything in the car was taken out, every suitcase opened on the side, and everything taken out and we were behind them.
And then the car behind couple of immigration authorities asked the people to take their stuff out of the car. And then an immigration man came to us and just called us with his finger and just sent us right through not even looking to what we had in our car.
And the closest shaves is when they asked us to write down on a piece of paper, everything we were carrying into the country.
So we began to write a list of everything we had. We made the list, a long list down about six sheets of paper. We wrote in untidy handwriting, and we wrote at the bottom of this long, long list, 60 Bibles, 44 new testaments.
So, we handed the list, they began to read the top of the list and just read through it and then went very quickly. Second and third page, "That's fine, off you go." By the time they got to the end of the page, they're bored. We only got refused to entry once, that was in Czechoslovakia, and they gave us a big red stamp saying that we were not longer welcome in the country, and we actually had nothing in the car on that occasion. We were driving home, going through checks of back to meet some Christians in East Germany.
They asked us some difficult questions, were a bit suspicious, "What have you been doing and where have you been?" And so, I eventually said, "We actually had been visiting in Romania, some friends of ours." "Where'd you meet these friends?"
"Well, we met them in Romania." "How were they friends of you when you met them in Romania?" "Well, they became friends." But how did you know you're going to find them?" "Because somebody gave us their address." "What were these friends doing?"
"Well, they're just being people." "Did you leave them anything?" "Yes." "What did you leave them?" "Some English books." Because we had some English books, but we had Romanian Bibles.
"Anything else?" "Well yeah, we let them couple Romanian books as well." "What the books about?" "Well, they're books about life." Said, "We don't like this. We think you are up to something rather strange. I'm sorry. You cannot come in." To which I go I'm like, "Yeah."
But it was okay because we weren't going to drop anything there anyway. But every other occasion, we experienced God protecting us and taking us through.
But the point and I think we are right to have agreed this, that if we get caught, we accept the consequences. And I think that's what it means to be in submission to authority.
If there are times when you feel in good conscience before God, my obedience to God supersedes as it does my obedience to the state, when those two commands are in conflict, I disobey but recognizing the right of government to exercise its jurisdiction and punish me accordingly, if that's what it chooses to do.
And it seems to me that was the attitude of the early church. And you know that for centuries, for three centuries anyway, the church pretty well lived outside the protection of the law, the Roman law, and many Christians lost their lives, but you never find any complaint about the government.
They don't have the right to do this, they recognize it's because of our faithfulness to Christ, they have chosen to exercise this right, and we submit ourselves to the authorities.
Government is to Operate for our Good
Government is ordained by God is the first point. Government is obeyed by us, is the second point. Government is to operate for our good, is the third point. You see verse three and four, let me read this again, "Rulers hold no terror for those who do right but for those who do wrong.
Do you want to be free from the one in authority? Then do what is right and he will commend you for he's God servant to do you good." Now then that text ought to be across every government building in Canada and every other part of the world.
Government is God's servant to do you good. What is necessary for the good of the nation. But if you do wrong, be afraid. He does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God's servant and agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoing.
Government is to operate for the good of its people and part of operating for the good of its people means that there is recourse to punishment when we don't conform to what is required of us for a good, wholesome, healthy society.
Now punishment is not a nice word. It doesn't sound like a nice word but actually, it's a very wholesome word. Don't relegate the idea of punishment or the dark ages or to the period of un-enlightenment.
Punishment actually gives us dignity because it recognizes responsibility. I'm not talking about vindictive acts of aggression, of course. But punishment, consequences for stepping over the line of what is required. You know in family life; you need to build boundaries. And within those boundaries, children are free to do whatever they want within the boundaries.
But as they go over the boundary, there are consequences. And of course, as the children grow, the boundaries get pushed out further and further until they disappear. At least they think they disappear. And punishment gives dignity. Gives dignity because it is affirming a sense of responsibility.
And when God gave us responsibility, as he did, he also gave us accountability. And if there was no punishment, there could be no real responsibility.
Now who has a responsibility to punish? Let me suggest three. God has given government first of all, the responsibility to punish. It may be national government, it may be authority in a workplace, it may be authority in an educational establishment.
And I suggest that the punishment has four values. It helps define and reinforce the values of that particular community and those need to be reinforced. It affirms the responsibility of the individual by calling them to account. It satisfies the need for redress, and there is the need for redress in any community.
That's one of the important things about justice, that the community feels it's been done. And fourthly, it encourages change behaviour because many of us as the scripture tells us, are changed by discipline. So, God has given the government the responsibility to punish.
Secondly, God has given parents the responsibility to punish. Children who grew up in an environment where bad action to not bring consequences and punishment, do not usually grow up with a healthy sense of self-esteem and a sense of significance and value.
As parents, we dislike disciplining and punishing our children and if we enjoyed it, we would have a big problem. We don't like it. None of us enjoy punishing children when that is necessary. But the times when we do so for their good, and the book of Proverbs says a lot about this. I'll read you one verse.
It talks about a man whose life ends in chaos, and it says, "At the end of your life, you're grown when your flesh and body are spent and you'll say, 'How I hated discipline, how my heart spurned correction.'" And the book of Proverbs says, "It's a fool that spurns correction." And this means I hated discipline when I was young as a result, when I'm old, my life is fallen apart. I'm insecure. I don't know right from wrong.
Hebrews chapter 12:11 says, no discipline seems pleasant at the time but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. You see discipline is dealing with the long-term production of a harvest, he says there, of righteousness. And so, parents need to discipline their children.
God has a Right to Punish
But God has given himself thirdly, the right to punish, the responsibility to punish. He's given it to governments, he's given it to parents, and he's given it to himself. That's why the scripture talks about a judgment seat of Christ. In the next chapter, Romans 14:10, "We will all stand before God's judgment seat," writes Paul.
Later in 2 Corinthians 5:10, "We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ that each one may receive what is due to him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad." This is one of the things which he gives to you and to me as human beings, dignity that one day we stand accountable before God. Otherwise, we don't matter.
Otherwise, what we do doesn't matter. Otherwise, how we behave doesn't matter. Otherwise, you yourself don't matter. And this says coming a judgment day and there is. And that's why when we are judged and disciplined and punished by our parents, by the authorities, God has set into society. We learn the benefits from it. That one day we're going to stand before God as our judge.
In fact punishment, it's not a nice word as I say, punishment lies at the very heart of the Christian gospel. Because the cross is actually all about punishment. Let me read you a verse which tells us that.
In Isaiah 53:5, speaking prophetically says of Christ,
"He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our inequities. The punishment that brought us peace was upon him and by his wounds, we are healed."
What actually happened on the cross, God, the judge poured out his judgment on someone who is acting as your substitute and mine.
And when you and I come to Christ in repentance and in humility and recognize our own need and guilt. And we say, "Lord, I deserve your judgment, but I want to thank you for the cross." That is God punishing sin because punishment is a divine attribute, to punish. Because of the respect and the dignity and the responsibility that God gives to every human being.
It's the integrity of God that demands justice be done. God, who is himself ordered, has ordered his creation, we know it's a fallen world, we know we get bad governments, there are bad governments and in democracy, let's only blame ourselves for that, by the way, if that's what we feel.
But there are other parts of the world with bad governments and not much seems to be able to be done about it by the people who are living under that government. But although they're bad governments and good governments, God ordained the principle of government.
We might be accountable, we might live with a sense of responsibility, we might be given dignity of there being consequences when our actions are wrong and consequence, when our actions are right. We reap the benefits of doing what is good and the cons from doing what is wrong.
So Paul is saying here, "It's wonderful to be reconciled to God, to be forgiven, to be justified by faith, to be brought into union with Christ, to be endured by the holy spirit, to surrender yourself, your body, to Christ all."
This is what he's been teaching earlier parts of the charter, but don't let that make you think that then you become somehow apart from the affairs of this world. We live in them, and we live under authority.
Government is ordained by God. Government is to be obeyed by us and government is to operate for our good, but where we are wrong, it bears the sword, he says, "An agent of God's wrath, God's judgment."
And so, we of all people need to be citizens that give respect and submission to government and the church of Jesus Christ needs to model that and to demonstrate that.