Christian Citizenship and Obedience to Authority

Okay, now I'm ready to go. February the 16th, Romans chapter 13, beginning with verse 6, the Christian citizenship. Of course, there's a connection between beginning with verse 6 and with the first five verses of chapter 13, because Paul uses the same ideas as he addresses them, so I want to go back and read those so that it's in the context in which Paul spoke them. Reading simply a passage apart from the setting in which it's found is always a big mistake. 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 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, an agent of wrath, to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities not only because of possible punishment, but also because of conscience. This is why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God's servants who give their full time to governing. Give everyone what you owe him. If you owe him taxes, pay taxes. If revenue, then revenue. If respect, then respect. If honor, then honor. Paul has talked about the taxing situation a couple of instances. He brought it up earlier in this passage. Paul is now focusing on the details about what he's asking them to do, and he's really directing the attention to Mark chapter 12, where Jesus was confronted with the same issue about whether or not to support the Roman government. Sharon asked last time something about how we should react to governing authorities who are immoral, or are wicked people, or not proper kind of people you should have. In this instance, Paul's writing to the church in the Roman geographical area. At the time, we don't know exactly when Paul wrote this letter. There are various estimates about 53 A.D. to 55 or 6 even A.D., but it was right in this time that there was a change of rulers in Rome. Claudius was the ruler before, and Nero was the one who followed him. He was a young guy. He was adopted into Claudius' family. The Roman laws of adoption were that if someone was adopted, they were actually considered a blood child, and so would take precedence even over a natural child born in that family. Claudius had adopted Nero for the primary purpose of installing him to be the emperor. Nero turned out to be quite different than Claudius. His mother tried to get his brother into the position of emperor, and he killed his brother, poisoned him. His mother was a constant troublemaker for him, for Nero, and so he killed her. He was married to three different women. He abandoned them. One of them he killed when she was pregnant so he wouldn't have to have that child. He finally had a male slave castrated and married that male slave, and some books say that he also married another man at one occasion. So he had three wives, and he killed I think maybe two of them, and he had two homosexual men that he married. So if you would look at this picture, it would not be the kind of picture you would think that Paul would say your governor should be someone you should look with favor on. He knew all these things. They were common knowledge to everyone. So in writing his passage, he's writing in a situation where it's maybe worse than anything we've seen in terms of our own country, our own culture, and most countries too. But Paul is talking about Nero or Claudia. We don't know exactly which one he was talking about at the time. In a language that's unusual. But Jesus was doing the same thing. Now what Jesus wrote was previous to this, an entirely different ruler. Later, chapter 12 of Mark, beginning with verse 13, later they sent some of the Pharisees and Herodians to Jesus to catch him in his words. They came to him and said, Teacher, we know you're a man of integrity. You aren't swayed by men because you pay no attention to who they are. But you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not? Should we pay or shouldn't we? Jesus knew their hypocrisy. He means by that they didn't want to have an answer to that question really. They were just, had another alternative, another intention in mind. He knew they were, what their real issue was. We want to trap him. There's not any way he can get out of this. He's going to be, authorities are going to be mad at him if he says we shouldn't pay taxes and the people are going to be mad at him if he says you should. Jesus' response was to say, why are you trying to trap me, he asked. Maybe it's catching. Bring me a denarius. And let me look at it. They brought him a coin and he asked them, whose portrait's on this and whose inscriptions? Caesar, they replied. Then Jesus said to them, give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's. Now I think most people are familiar with that saying of Jesus, but think about this for a minute. This was an instruction of Jesus. If you were to read it to say, he is saying to people, give to God what God is due. You would say that's a Christian command, wouldn't you? Well the other side of that is also a command of Jesus. Give to Caesar what is due to him. Jesus makes both the paying of taxes to Caesar and the paying of our tithe to God a command of God, a religious activity. So you have almost a couple of months to get ready when you pay your taxes and sign them to say, this is a gift to God, a holy act of worship to God. You may have to bite your tongue a couple of times, but that's what Jesus was saying. If you're a follower of mine, you should give to the government what is due to the government. That is your religious, spiritual duty. And you should give to God what is duly his. That is your religious, spiritual duty. You see, whenever God is in charge of our lives and he tells us to do something, doing it is an act of worship. Why? Because you're saying, you are in charge. You tell me what to do, and I accept you as the Lord of my life, and so I'm going to do what you tell me to do because you are the Lord. Who do you pay the tithe to when you tithe or give? God, right? Somebody had that answer? That's right. Oftentimes people think they pay it to the church. And whenever you give your tithe, it is not to the church, or it's not because there's a needy cause. It's because God said, this is what you're supposed to give. So a lot of people get in church and they don't like the preacher. I know a guy in family used to live in our association, and every time they got a preacher in their church they didn't like, they quit tithing, quit giving it to the church. They'd give it to the association. They were using their tithe as a weapon against the pastor in the church. Now I think that's contrary entirely to what the Bible teaches us to do. And whenever you give your tithe to God, and you put the means of it in the church, then the church's responsibility is to deal with your tithe in obedience to God. But if you don't like what the church does, and you say, I'm not going to give them money, you're simply saying, I'm not giving this to God, I'm giving it to whoever I think deserves it. What God asks us to do is to recognize that stewardship of our money involves doing what he tells us. And stewardship with our money not only means Jesus is saying, giving this to God, but it also means giving your taxes to the government under which you live is an act of obedience to me too. Both of them are the result of commandments that God has given to us about how we are to manage our money. So once you give it, it's not that you say, okay, I have been supporting the government. You're not. You're simply doing what God tells you to do. You've given this money in the state in which you placed me, the government that you've given here. I am required by the government to give this money, and as an act of obedience, I give it. He doesn't say that you can't make sure you have as low a taxes as possible, as long as you don't cheat. He doesn't say you can't vote to lower your taxes. He just says that when the law is established as about your taxes, it is a spiritual act of obedience to pay them. Now that's what Paul is emphasizing again when it comes to chapter 13 of the book of Romans. This is also why you pay taxes. Now some people think he's talking about the last part of this previous verse 5 because it's necessary to submit to authorities, do not only because of punishment, not just because the government requires it. See, he's going back to what Jesus said. It's not because the government requires you to pay taxes that you pay them, but it's because God has said to you, this is what I want you to do. So that giving to the church as a means whereby you give to God, or giving to the state is a channel whereby you give to God. Why is that true? Because he said the government is God's servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoers. See, what Paul's idea is that God has placed government in our lives as a means whereby he provides a structure for the world whereby his people might be able to live and do the work that God has given them. Government is given by God for order and structure so that you'll be able to live in freedom and proclaim the truth of God all around the world. That's what he wanted to be able to do. So governments everywhere who do that provide a structure and God has placed them there for that purpose. So in verse 6, he's kind of reaching back to verse 5 and all the way back to Mark 12. But there's an interesting play on words here. You'll notice that the word here, this is why also you pay taxes and the word taxes. And then he says in verse 7, give everyone what you owe him. If you owe taxes, pay taxes. It's the same word as the word above. And if revenue, then revenue. Two different words. The difference between those two words might be explained in our language to say the word for taxes is direct taxes like you would have an income tax or a property tax. The word for revenue is like you would have a sales tax, a tax that's given for indirect, it's an indirect tax. It's not a tax that the government gives to you, that orders you to pay, but it's a tax that comes based on some action that you do. Like if you buy food at the grocery store, they tack on a sales tax. So when you went there to the grocery store, your intent was not to pay your taxes, but was to buy groceries. So the taxing there is what is called indirect taxes. So he's talking about both of these. Now, in the time, this time in Nero's government, there was a great outcry. The Romans didn't have to pay direct taxes. If you were a citizen of Rome, you didn't pay direct taxes. So they could live tax-free. It was the people who were not citizens in Rome, and citizenship was a great prize to be held because it had so many benefits to it. One of them was you didn't have to pay any taxes, which was a position Paul was in. He was a Roman citizen. But if you went out and did any kind of revenue, like you bought things and with sales tax on them, you had to pay taxes. So Nero had raised the indirect taxes a lot, and there was a great cry among the Roman citizens who had been tax-free up to now to avoid that tax. What Paul is addressing to them, these people who live in Rome now, if you're Roman citizens and you've been free from paying the taxes, the direct taxes, the ones he said above, and now you're facing this issue of indirect taxes, you must pay that yourself too. So he is including both those who were citizens and were not paying income tax, and those who were citizens and paying indirect taxes. So he was saying to all the people who were there, whatever measure of taxation you're under, it is your obligation to make sure that you pay your taxes. God is simply stressing this as a requirement on his side. Now whenever we look at this, we can say our sales tax is a certain level, the property tax is a certain level, and we could petition the government, there's no meaning in here that says you can't petition the government to lower your taxes. What it means is in the end result, when it's over, you owe those taxes and you pay them. I suppose you can complain about it if you want to, in the very same way that people complain about tithing, but you need to understand that God has given us a requirement to do these things, both of them, and they are actions to him, not to the church or to the government. So the Christian citizen recognizes that the person in charge of the government has been placed there by God, and the funding for that person to do the work they're doing is an establishment that God has made. So that the work of the kingdom and the tithing mechanism by which God is placed in place are both the same in this sense. God has structured the church this way, and he's structured the social society this way. Both of those are for the benefit of the kingdom of God, and as such, he wants us to understand that the person who's in charge of the government, wherever they are, are his servants. Notice he says, this is why you pay taxes for the authorities, are God's servants. It's the word deacon used here. He uses it previously also, to emphasize again that the person here in charge of the government, whoever it is in the government role, are genuinely servants of God. Now for us as citizens, we recognize that even though we may elect our officers here, our government officials here, once they take the leadership role, whether it's the mayor of the city council, or the governor, or the state legislature, or the president in the national legislature, once they're in that role, whether they know it or not, they are accountable to God. He is the ultimate authority and owner of all the world. And since he's placed them and he's made the world so that there's a structure for it, and the funding for it is to be given, we must trust God for the accountability of those people that are in office. It doesn't mean we can't vote them out. It doesn't mean we can't say we don't like them. It just means that when they're in position, we need to see this as God has established the government. He has established his rule of the world. We owe him one thing for his kingdom, another for the kingdoms of this earth. And we accept that place of authority. For these authorities are God's servants. They're doing his work, and so you pay your taxes to be able to do, to allow them to do the work that he's given them to do. They're God's servants who give their full time to governing. Their responsibility is to God for that. So here's his final principle. Give everyone what you owe him. In other words, what you owe to God, you give that to God. What do you owe God? You owe him obedience, submission to his authority, complete willingness to do whatever he's asked you to do. That you owe to him. What do you owe to government? The responsibility to take care of the laws of the land, to provide security and safety. And when those come in conflict with each other, as they do sometimes, our primary obligation is to God. The government and the kingdom of God are not on equal levels. For God is in charge of both of them. But the spiritual kingdom in which we live takes priority over even the earthly kingdom. And so we see in the book of Acts where Paul is called before the courts and he's ordered not to, he's instructed not to preach about Jesus. And he says simply to them, you have to decide for yourself what you're going to do. But as for me, I have to be obedient to what Christ has told me. He lets us see that the priority is that the earthly government keeps us from doing the work that God has given us. We have the requirement to place God's kingdom above the earthly kingdom in terms of obedience. There is no question about that order of authority. Give everyone what you owe them. God you owe ultimate authority. The earthly government you owe earthly authority, not the eternal or primary authority. So to the earthly authority, if you owe taxes to pay for the government, pay your taxes. If you owe sales taxes or indirect revenue, then pay your indirect revenue. If you owe respect, then respect. This is a big issue. Sometimes in our political world, it's not possible for us to live in the climate in which in politics it's very popular to win elections by creating disrespect. So whenever campaigns start in our culture, primarily they start by trying to make sure that everybody has no respect for the other candidate and they dig up every kind of dirt that they can and every kind of story that they can and publish it to make sure that the other person looks like they're the lowest slime on earth. It's a very dangerous thing for us to be involved in politics because that's so prominent in what takes place. It's not that candidates today will say, I want to present my own case and I'm going to tell you why I should be in this office. No matter how difficult, how much they want to do that, sooner or later they find the stories and lies that are created about them become so powerful they start doing the same thing. That's what makes it hard for us. So what is a Christian to do? If you receive emails that say nasty things about the character of candidates, you ought never to send them to anybody until you've checked out to make sure they're true. Any more than if somebody called you and said, so-and-so said that one of the members of your church is trying to kill another person. You wouldn't pass that on until you checked to make sure it was true. Why? Because you respect your brothers and sisters in Christ. What he asks us now to do is to say, we want you also to have respect for others. You don't have to agree with them, but you have to respect them. And if you look at the paper, the newspaper, and you'll see all these commentators that are writing, if they have an issue with a political candidate, it doesn't matter the party, if they have an issue with a political candidate, what they will do in the article are use words that would make this person look stupid, inadequate, foolish. And those words are designed to denigrate the character of the person, not their policies or their actions, but their character. And we must stay away from that. That's not part of our conversation. You may dislike the policies of the governor, but to call him an idiot is not proper for a believer. Not to call him a fool is not proper for a believer. What God wants us to do is to express our opinion about what we believe with respect. And if you have differences with a person and you start calling them names, what you do when you start calling them names, idiot or stupid or fool, you keep them from being human beings made in the image of God. And now you see them as a person who doesn't deserve respect. You see this in war. Whenever people are in war, they have a name for their enemy that is different than who they are. For example, they may call Chinese people chinks. They may call Japanese people japs. Because you're not killing a human being if you kill one. You're killing a jap or a chink. And whenever we start with that, you see, we lose the respect that we ought to have for every human being in the world is made in the image of God. It's what God's trying to help us see. So that to people who you should respect, and who should you respect? People in an office that God has placed there that are his servants. All the government officials, for example, his servants. You don't have to like them or agree with them or agree with their policies, but we are required to give them respect. If honor, then you give them honor. The position of leadership that they have gives you that position of honor and respect. Now some of you guys have been in the military. And I've seen on television, I don't know, I wasn't in the military myself, so I don't know, but they would say you had an officer, commanding officer, maybe you didn't like or didn't do things the way you want, and you saluted them because you were saluting the office. Isn't that the way they teach you in the military? So you salute the uniform and the person it represents. That's what God is saying here. You may have a governor or a president or a senator that you don't agree with or like, and you can express all the disagreements you want, but you're to respect, you say the uniform, the office, you are to respect that they are my servant. See? That person is my servant. And when you are insulting them and not respecting them and dishonoring them, you are dishonoring one of my soldiers doing my job in the world, whether it's a government official or someone working in the church, the body of the church. So that we are living in this world with restrictions placed on us that the rest of the world doesn't have. Christian citizenship requires us to treat people the way Christ treated people. All people, because everyone is made in the image of God, and government officials are servants of God, accountable to Him for what they do, and you know that when you're accountable to God, you pay for what you do. And when you see honor officials who are not doing that, you know that somewhere along the line, the payment comes to them, because they're accountable to God for what they do. God's restrictions for us is to say our citizenship is under His control and our politics are under His control, and He holds us accountable for honor and respect and paying our taxes. Those are requirements He places on us, and you can't be a good Christian, you can't be a good follower of Christ, if you don't do those things. You can pay your taxes, if you insult God's workers and show them no honor and respect, you have to answer for God to God for that, because they are His soldiers, holding offices in which He has placed them. So our role of Christian citizens is to be quite different than those that are around us. And you'll find yourself in circumstances sometimes where the political conversation gets turned in a way that the Holy Spirit should say to you, you shouldn't be joining in this conversation. This is for pagans to do, and not for my children. If you're upset about this, you go home and you tell me what you're upset about, and the managers and the officials that I've placed in those places, I will deal with them. Now, I can tell you right off that God never deals with people, other people, as quickly as He should. He always deals with us quicker than we think He should, but other people, He always is far more patient than we'd like Him to be. But His judgment, though postponed, is never absent. And we have the confidence that people in positions of authority, and we've seen this over and over again in our own country, where people who look like they're great political people and wonderful people, and then six months later they're thrown in jail for something that they've been caught doing. God has a way of making sure, if people are not doing what He wants them to do, that they get paid back. And it's not our job to do the paying back, but it is our job to be faithful in what He's asked us to do. Being political in the world and country in which you've been placed is a spiritual responsibility, as well as an act of citizenship. But even our citizenship is under God's control, because He is the Lord of all. Let's pray. Father, help us to be seen by the people around us as involved in our community, the political affairs that go on, but help us see in us a different kind of involvement, involvement that respects both the people we favor and those that we don't, that we honor people, even though we disagree with them. Help us to be able to live this action, because you have told us this is how we should live. In the name of Christ, we ask for your guidance in this area, for our country is torn apart by this fractious nature, each side calling each other names until they're so torn apart that they can't even get along with each other. We are sent to be light into this world of darkness. Help us to accept that responsibility and not be tricked into being a part of it. In the name of Christ, we ask it, amen. All right. I will get your hat. Yeah, there you go. I get it. I move down over there and that's good. Oh, you're a good listener. Oh, your hat. Get your hat carried over there. I know. I've heard that before. Let's try to get you to sit on this side. Oh, there we go. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Yeah. I'll take it. Oh, well, you can turn it to the left. I want to. No, I didn't see it. I see my clothes. How you doing, dear? Hi, Carl.