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Romans 54: Time For The World To Get Up (13:11-14)

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Introduction

The Incarnation of the Word, and the resurrection of that Word from the dead, has entirely remade the world. We fail to recognize this because we don’t understand history—and the way the world actually was before Christ came into it. But humanity lived through a long night indeed, and when Christ came, the sun rose. Men still sin, but the sun is up. We can still have cloudy days, and even storms, but the sun is up—and cannot be made to ever go down.

The Text

“And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light. Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying. But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof” (Rom.13:11-14).

Summary of the Text

We have seen how the believers are to submit themselves to the old authorities. They were true authorities, but their rough governance of humanity was in the process of being replaced. We have also seen how believers are to treat one another lawfully from the heart, which is what love is. And so now we come to some very interesting applications. The apostle Paul takes the Decalogue, the meaning of love, and pushes it into some interesting corners. Paul says that the Roman Christians should know the time (v. 11). What time was it? Time to wake up, because salvation was nearer than when the first Christians first believed (v. 11). What is this approaching salvation? It is the cataclysm that Paul has been preparing the Roman Christians for—the final conclusion of the Judaic aeon and the formal, unfettered commencement of the Christian aeon. Note that the night is far spent (v. 12), and that the day is “at hand” (v. 12). Paul is not talking about the second coming, many thousands of years in the future. The response to this immediate eschatological reality is to cast off the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light (v. 12). Once up, with the panoply on, what are these believers to do? They were to walk honestly, because it is day time (v. 13). This honest walk excludes six things—riotous partying, drunkenness, fornication, wantonness, strife, and envying. Put off the old man, and instead put on the Lord Jesus (v. 14), making no provision for the flesh or its lusts (v. 14).

Armor of Light

How should someone act if they are dressed out in the armor of light? What should their behavior be? Right away, it excludes certain things. Orgies or riotous parties are out. So also is drunkenness. The next sin is translated chambering, but the word means sexual immortality. After that is a rejection of sensuality, lasciviousness, or filthiness. Then comes strife or quarreling, and after that is envy. We are dressed in the armor of light, and we are to walk as the children of light (Eph.5:8). We are to do this in a way that produces the fruit of the Spirit, the fruit of light—that which is good, right, and true (Eph. 5:9). Set your minds on heavenly things (Col. 3:2). Whatever is pure, (Phil. 4:8), think about that.

Put Off, Put On

These instructions are given to Christians. When you were first converted, you put off the old man, and you put on the new man, Jesus. That was a fundamental action. But it is not the kind of action that never needs to be repeated. We repeat this motion throughout the course of our lives. We put off, and we put on. We put off the old, corrupt way of being a human being, and we put on the new and glorious way of being a human being—the Lord Jesus.

No Provision

An important part of what it means to put off the old man concerns the way we speak. “Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers” (Eph. 4:29). “And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them. For it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret” (Eph. 5:11-12). Right after this, Paul uses the same image he used in our passage here, that of waking up from sleep so that Christ the sun could shine on us. One of the disgraceful things in the modern church is slack entertainment standards, being willing to be entertained in our homes by people that we wouldn’t have in our homes. But digitizing a dirty joke doesn’t clean it up any. And then Christians begin speaking and joking that way themselves—although the Bible plainly says not to. Wake up, sleepers.

Eschatological Ethics

The Bible calls us to holiness because of who we are—we are named as Christians in our baptism. But the Scriptures also summon us to purity because of where we are in the story. That is what is happening here.

The Roman Christians were told not to behave in a certain way because it was morning. Christ is the sun, and this is why this contextualization does not make it inapplicable to us in our situation. The first Christians were staggering down for coffee at 5:30 am. We are busy at work, mid-morning. Does this reasoning apply to us, less or more? We are engaged in the work of the Great Commission, which consists of racking people out of their beds. As the morning progresses, this becomes even more of a necessity. As the day progresses, we have to stay with it. Some lazy men have trouble getting up, which is what Paul was addressing. Other lazy men have trouble working through the day, which is what we are addressing—but the point is the same. Don’t be like the archbishop who once joked that he didn’t get up early because it made him proud all morning, and sleepy all afternoon.

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Romans 53: The Heart of the Law (13:8-10)

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Introduction

A very popular mistake among Christians is that of contrasting love and the law, as though we had to pick and choose. Will we live according to love, or according to the law? But if we must love, isn’t that a law, a great commandment? And if we keep the law truly, won’t we realize that love permeates all of it? Love God and love your neighbor—this is the law and the prophets.

The Text

“Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law. For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law” (Rom. 13:8-10).

Summary of the Text

In the previous verse, we were told that we should render to all their due. The word used there is the noun form of what we have here in v. 8, where it says not to owe anything. Not to owe here does not therefore mean that we are never to have obligations. It means that we may have no obligations inconsistent with the obligation to love (v. 8). If you love your neighbor, then you have fulfilled the law with regard to him, which means that you have fulfilled your obligations (v. 8). The apostle Paul then lists five of the ten commandments, and then includes all the others, and says that they are all summed up in the commandment to love your neighbor as yourself (v. 9). Love does no harm to his neighbor (v. 10), which is why we know that love is the fulfillment of the law (v. 10).

Debt Itself

As with so many passages of Scripture, to take a snippet out of its context and absolutize it, is a good way to distort the Bible. “Owe no man any thing” has a nice ring to it, and is right up there with “neither a borrower nor a lender be.” Unfortunately, this absolutist view collides with Scripture. Jesus commands us to lend, for example. “But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again” (Luke 6:34-35). Not only does He command loans, He commands dumb loans to our enemies. The ability to lend is a profound covenantal blessing (Dt. 15:6-8). Charging interest for need loans is lawful outside the covenant, and is prohibited within (Dt. 23:20). Moreover, the law presupposes the lawfulness of borrowing (Ex. 22:14). The law does not slam the person who is in need of a loan, but rather protects him (Lev. 25:35-36). At the same time, it is better to lend than to borrow, just as it is better to be warm and dry than cold and wet (Dt. 28:12). The borrower has the weaker hand (Prov. 22:7), which relates to our text here—unwise debt interferes with the obligation to love.

Different Kinds of Debt, One Kind of Love

Before considering some common problems with our obligations, we need to settle one other issue first. The biblical laws with regard to loans and interest, brothers and non-believers, are laws that apply to poverty-relief loans. They are not laws that apply to a business investment, for example. But, having said that, the obligation to love your neighbor applies as much to your neighbor with whom you are working a business deal as it does with a poverty loan. If a poor man cannot pay back a loan, and he avoids his benefactor, he is not loving him. And if a man has a business deal blow up on him, and he does not return his investors’ calls, he is not loving him. There are different kinds of debt, but there is only one kind of neighbor love.

Some Don’ts of Debt

When we understand love the way we ought, we must always begin with what our love should look like when extended to our brother, and not what his love extended to us should look like. Perhaps it should look like that, and perhaps you are quite right. But that is also not your principal business. First, don’t abuse your family. “Whoso robbeth his father or his mother, and saith, It is no transgression; the same is the companion of a destroyer” (Prov. 28: 24). The fact that you haven’t paid back family members makes it worse, not better. Second, don’t abuse the Golden Rule. Just because you wouldn’t mind if that were done to you doesn’t mean they don’t. Don’t exercise other people’s generosity and forgiveness toward you on their behalf. That’s another form of taking. Third, don’t refuse to pay what you can pay. Words are free, communication is free, even if you are flat broke. When love is there, the debtor initiates communications before the creditor needs to, and is persistent with it. Fourth, don’t abuse the passage of time. A poor memory is not the same thing as a good conscience. And fifth, don’t measure his love with the yardstick of your debts. Measure your own love with it.

The Heart of the Law

The Lord Jesus teaches us (Matt. 22:40) that the entire law is summed up in these two commandments— love God (Dt. 6 :5) and love your neighbor (Lev. 19:18). The apostle Paul teaches the same principle here. He says that certain specific commands, and any others you might be able to find, are summed up or “comprehended” in this one command. The Decalogue sums up the whole law (Ex. 34:28), as do these two commandments, which means that these two sum up the Ten Commandments as well.

Love does no harm to his neighbor. The great lesson for us here is that this harm is defined, not by our intentions or motives, but by the law of God. Just as love fills out the law, so the law defines love. The law is the riverbed and love is the water. If you have no riverbed, but a lot of sentimental water, what you have is a swamp in which a lot of fornication occurs. If you have no water, but a long riverbed, you just have something for the tumbleweed to blow down the length of.

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Romans 52: Governmental Tax Cheats (13:6-7)

Joe Harby on

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Introduction

When considering the subject of our duty to pay taxes, the Bible seems plain enough. But a lot rides on where you place the emphasis—where do the italics go? Governments exist by covenant, and governments like ours explicitly claim to exist by covenant. The word federal comes from the Latin word foedus, which means covenant. But covenants have terms and stipulations. They have conditions, just as our text before us has conditions.

The Text

“For for this cause pay ye tribute also: for they are God’s ministers, attending continually upon this very thing. Render therefore to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honour to whom honour” (Rom. 13:6-7).

Summary of the Text

The payment of taxes is linked to the reason that went before—“for this cause.” Your conscience is bound to pay taxes to the extent that the magistrate is serving as God’s deacon or minister in the execution of His wrath (v. 4). This is the foremost reason given for paying tribute, because they are functioning as God’s deacons. Paul mentions this for the third time, only this time His ministers are His liturgoi (v. 6), the word from which we get liturgy.

Remember that liturgies are prescribed. Free form interpretive dance is not “a liturgy,” even if you are waving a copy of the Constitution. We pay tribute because the magistrate is “attending continually” to this very task (v. 6). Render your obligations, therefore (v. 7). Render tribute, render custom, render fear, and render honor (v. 7).

What We Are Told to Render

We are told twice to render tribute (vv. 6-7). The word is only used elsewhere in Luke. Jesus is asked if it is lawful to pay tribute to Caesar or not (Luke 20:22). He answers in the affirmative, but with a striking exclusion. Later, He is accused of teaching that it was unlawful to pay tribute to Caesar (Luke 23:2). We are told to render custom (telos) to whom custom is due. The other place where this word is used in in Matt. 17:24-27, where Jesus interestingly pays a tax that He says is not owed. The last two obligations to render are not monetary. We are told to render fear to whom fear is due, and honor to whom honor is due. Remember that Paul is writing this when Nero is emperor—and even in his relatively good five years of rule, he was no believer.

Naboth’s Vineyard and Land Reform

We need to get the theology of this thing straight first. If governments can steal, as we see with Ahab and Naboth, then they can obviously do so through the tax code. Tax codes can be passed illegally and unjustly. Legislators can be bribed to get them to vote for it. The agents charged with enforcement can throw aside all biblical rules of evidence, and so on. If this can in fact happen, and it clearly can, then there can be circumstances in which a tax dispute between the government and the citizenry is a dispute which exists because the government is cheating on taxes.

In other words, we should not assume that whenever the government says that money is owed, and blood-donating turnip says that it isn’t, that it is the turnip who is cheating. In short, it is quite possible that the biggest tax cheat in America today is the federal government. If you say it is not even possible, then you are missing a basic biblical truth about government, and have forgotten the nature of man. If it is possible, then it becomes important to determine where the line is—because that is the line where conscience leaves off and practical considerations alone make the determination.

There is taxation which is not theft (see our text), and there is taxation which is. Where is the line? In this text, Paul firmly anchors the lawful payment of taxes to the lawful functions of government.

How Then Should We File?

When the government is recognizably fulfilling the functions that God has assigned to it, paying taxes for Christians is a moral obligation before God. We should pay our taxes dutifully, and with gratitude toward God, and we should do so “for conscience sake” (v. 5).

When it starts to become evident that the “powers that be” have corrupted the process, then another round of decisions have to be made—and the criteria here would be pragmatic and tactical. But when this starts to become clear, we should not approach it in an autonomous way—“every man to his tents, oh, Israel!” Remember Calvin’s doctrine of the lesser magistrates.

Basic Applications

The old Chinese curse is “may you live in interesting times.” Well, we do, and here we are.
· You bear God’s image and Christ’s name. That cannot be rendered to Caesar lawfully.
· Scripture teaches the appropriate boundaries of government and appropriate responses when they are transgressed. If you don’t know what that teaching is, then set yourself to learn.
· You are citizens, not subjects. Christian history matters.
· You are members of a corporate body. Learning how lawful resistance functions is a question of social theology. Individual cussedness should never be confused with godly individuality. Obedience is rendered to God by ones, but it should be obedience rendered to God and His people, and not to your own opinions.
· Worship God, you and your family, in Spirit and in truth every Lord’s Day. This is the source of all true reformations.

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Romans 51: An Armed Deacon of God

Joe Harby on

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Introduction

We are taking care to work through this passage of Scripture deliberately and slowly, and there are at least two reasons for this. First, the issues involved are complex and important, and are more complex and important in our day than they usually are. Second, the misunderstandings that surround this portion of Scripture are legion. We have to be very careful here.

The Text

“For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil. Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake” (Rom. 13:4-5).

Summary of the Text

Contextually, we are talking about civil rule, civil power. Paul has called the magistrate the “powers that be.” The word here is the word for authority. All authorities whatever are from God (v. 1), and so it follows that civil authorities are from God (v. 1). The word is authority in vv. 1-2, and in verse 3, Paul calls those we are dealing with here “rulers.” What kind of rulers we are talking about becomes plain here in vv. 4-5, given their tools and what they do with them. For he (the ruler) is a minister of God, a deacon of God, and his assigned task is to do the Christian good (v. 4). If a person is an evildoer, then he should be worried and afraid, because the ruler does not bear the sword in vain (v. 4). He is again called the deacon of God, and his job is to execute vengeance and wrath upon evildoers (v. 4). The Christian needs to be obedient to the law, not just because he is afraid of this wrath (v. 5), but also because he is being obedient to God—that is, for conscience sake (v. 5).

A Task and Tool

God has given these rulers two things—a task and a tool. The assigned task is to administer avenging justice to those who do evil, and the tool for this task is the sword, an instrument of lethal violence. The word for sword here is machaira, and it was an instrument of warfare. It was not used for spanking bad boys with the flat of it. This was a double-edged sword, usually about 18 inches long, and commonly used by Roman soldiers. Peter used one to cut off an ear (Matt. 26:47); James the brother of John was executed with one (Acts 12:2); however sharp, it is incapable of separating us from the love of Christ (Rom. 8:35); it provides us with a figure for the Word of God (Eph. 6:17; Heb. 4:12). It was not a toy, and God gave it to His civil deacons to kill bad people with. However much our pacifist brothers might sweat over this passage, it says what it says, and it is not in the Old Testament.

Vengeance Is Still the Lord’s

Remember that this book is written just a few years before a rebellion breaks out against the Romans. The Jews, who would erupt in rebellion, were under a prophetic statement as old as Moses that they would lose this battle, and that God would humiliate them through a people of strange language because vengeance for all their idolatries belonged to Him. The Christians were being instructed here that under no circumstances were they to join this revolt. If God is coming after a people with vengeance in His eye, don’t you jump in between.

From this circumstance, we can and should render general by induction. After all the Romans and all the Jewish rebels were dead and gone, there were still evildoers in the world who needed to be restrained generally, and they need to be restrained by force. One of the uses of the law is to give guidance to the magistrate as he considers what to do (1 Tim. 1:9-11). All we are doing here is distinguishing the first century application from our own (necessary) applications—to muggers, terrorists, rapists, and so on. We won’t need the sword anymore when we don’t have crime anymore.

What It Means to Be a Deacon

So the state is God’s deacon (Rom. 13:4), and God never leaves His deacons without instructions. A deacon is, by definition, under authority. We should measure his appropriations and expenditures over against what he was told to do. When servants use the master’s resources for tasks unassigned by him (Luke 12:46-47), what is the result? When the Lord comes back to evaluate His deacons in the Congress, what will He do? He will not be indiscriminate; the punishments will fit the crimes. Some He will cut in sunder, and others will simply be beaten with many stripes. This will not happen because our rulers are not His deacons; rather, it will happen because they are. By definition, the armed deacons in this passage of Romans are under authority. Their authority does not originate with them, as much as they would like it to. Whose authority are they under? God’s. We obey them because God tells us to (for conscience sake), and not simply because we fear their punishments for wrongdoing. And if they are levying punishments for righteousness, we are not to fear them at all—and conscience is still operative.

A Hermeneutic of Fun

The apostle Paul tells the believers of his day that he advises against marriage because of the “present distress” (1 Cor. 7:26). He also is telling believers here in our text to stand back and let the Romans do to Jerusalem what they are going to do to it (Rom. 12:19; 13:). And yet, many believers have abstracted his principle here in the latter instance, and applied it to every situation throughout all time, which they haven’t done to the first passage—which was just as contextually situated. And why is this? We grasp the importance of limiting context in 1 Corinthians because it is fun to get the girl. A lot more fun, say, than standing up to tyrants is.

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