Rebellion
I find
that I wrestle with Romans 13 – especially the beginning. It isn’t at all that I think what Paul has written
is bad. I think it is great. I just wish that he would have also written a
part about what to do when government and authority legitimately goes bad. After all, I am a person in three ways born
out of revolution: physically, I live in
a country that separated from the British Empire when the ruling government was
determined to be inadequate; emotionally I am born out of the Lutheran movement
that believes in reform and it was born out of rebellion against the Roman
Catholic Church; and spiritually I am a Christian and am born out of the
radical rebellion against the traditional Judaism that was being taught in
Israel during the time of Christ. I am a
person whose core is born out of movements that rebelled against evil regimes.
Yet, Paul
tells us here to respect authority because God is the true source of
authority. Does that mean that the
rebellions out of which my persona is born were wrong? I hope not, because I genuinely believe that
at least two of the three rebellions to which I claim membership were led by
the Holy Spirit! Rather, I think what
Paul is saying here is more of a generalization than an absolute rule to be
obeyed at all times. Clearly, when an
authority forsakes God’s ways, we are to resist it. But rather than going any further down that
road, let’s talk about the generality that Paul is making.
What Paul
is getting at in this passage is that we as human being are by our very nature
rebellious. We turn our backs on God and
want to do it our own way all the time.
Rebellion is what our sinful nature is all about! Humans need authority: spiritual children
need a Spiritual Father, physical children need the authority of their parents,
emotional children need an authority of a mentor, etc. Without authority in our lives, we as human
beings have little hope of being productive in this life.
Love
Paul uses
this issue of subordination to authority to then springboard into Christian
living in general – and we’ll be in this topic for a few days. Paul begins with love, because this is really
where we should begin. I’ve been doing a
good bit of reading the past few days and I’ve been really convicted lately
that I don’t spend near as much time loving God as I should. After all, the truth is that a God who is
holy and righteous on His own should really have nothing to do with a sinner
like me. Yet, God wants me and you. God not only wants us, but God considers us
His inheritance! I really need to step
back and remember how lucky I am to be in a relationship with Him and just love
Him for it.
This
should be the motivation for the rest of our actions, too. Jesus says as much in Matthew 22:40 and Paul
says as much again in Galatians 5:14.
The whole of the Law is fulfilled in love. As Christ loved us, we should love one
another. When we learn to stop and just
love God, we will be far more likely to also be able to stop and love one
another.
Actually,
this leads me into a really neat line of thinking about returning us back to
understanding why God is important. The
truth is that I need God’s help to even love a perfect and holy God. Let that sink in for a while. I need help loving a perfect God.
Since that’s
true, then I certainly need God’s help in loving the rest of the fallen and
sinful world around me! {Thanks to Francis Chan in his book Crazy
Love for this thought.} If I want to
be able to love the people around me I need to learn from God how to love a God
who loved us first!
Goodness in Life
Once we
learn that love is a better way than the world’s sel-mongerism, we can live in
a way that is good. We learn that
drunkenness is neither good for ourselves nor for our neighbor, so we simply
don’t do that anymore. We learn that
extra-marital sexual relations are just not constructive to having good
relationships in our communities so we learn not to view our neighbors and
friends in sexual ways. We learn that
having more than our fair share only causes a disproportionate number of people
to live in poverty, so we stop doing that.
We learn that acting out of anger produces no positive benefit in our
community, so we stop doing that, too.
When we learn to love God and then learn to love one another, we
honestly make better choices because we care about those around us.
Or, well,
we should. I think we still struggle
with some things on the list in that prior paragraph. We probably always will, too. But in theory, that’s how it should
work. Once we understand our need for
authority, we learn about our need to submit.
Once we learn about our need to submit, we learn how to love. When we learn how to love, we display God to
the world and our communities will improve because of His presence.
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