#NotMyKingdom

Today on Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. You see, when governments allow injustice to thrive, whether that is the strong trampling the weak, a criminal trampling the rights of an ordinary citizen, when governments allow these things to happen, they are failing at their God-given jobs, and God says, they'll give an account to me for that. You know, I think you'd agree that one of the most difficult places to overcome evil with good is in our relationship with the government and its leaders. So often we disagree with policies and rhetoric that simply go against our most deeply held beliefs. Today, Pastor J.D. shares the apostle Paul's wisdom and shows us why even when we don't approve of certain political leaders or endorse what they stand for, we must still honor them. We submit from our hearts, but never in a way that disobeys God. It's a fine line, but it's an important distinction. So grab your Bible and a pen and let's join Pastor J.D.

for a timely message he titled, "#NotMyKingdom." All right, if you got your Bible and I hope that you got them, I am delighted to have you open them to the book of Romans. Romans chapter 13. Warning, okay, let's just go ahead and just say it up straight up.

This one's going to be a doozy. I feel like I said that a lot during this series, but this passage is about how followers of Jesus should think about government. You know, in the course of this study, through the book of Romans, we have dealt with little simple lighthearted topics like original sin, homosexuality, God's wrath, predestination, and now this.

It's like I can't win. It's like Paul is bound and determined to make it very difficult for me, for us to grow a church, and he's bound to have my inbox kept filled up every single week. Here we go, chapter 13 verse one. Let's everyone, everyone means everyone, everybody look around right now, look at the person next to you, the left of you, that's an everyone, and they're also looking at an everyone.

Everyone is an everyone. Let everyone submit to the governing authority since there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are instituted by God. I will remind you as I will talk about a little bit more deeply here in a few minutes that when Paul wrote these words, not a single one of the authorities were Christians. Verse two, so then the one who resists the authority is opposing God's command, and those who oppose that authority will bring judgment on themselves, because rulers, you see, are not a terror to good conduct, they're a terror to bad. Do you want to be unafraid of the authority?

Well, do what is good, then you will have its approval. Paul is speaking, of course, in a very general sense. He's not saying there's no exceptions to this, but I mean, you get the logic of that, right? Right?

If you want to be afraid, then he says, just do what's right. I mean, why is it that you panic when you're driving down the interstate and you see policemen parked behind the billboard on Interstate 85? Why does it make you frustrated? On the way back from our Thanksgiving, I said in frustration to my wife, why are there so many policemen out on the highway 85 at like four o'clock on a Saturday afternoon? I mean, are that many people getting hopped up on tryptophan and going out and reckless driving in the middle of the afternoon?

Is that a thing? And she just looked at me very calmly and said, just obey the speed limit. You don't have to worry about them. And she is probably correct. Now, rulers are usually a terror to those who are doing bad, not those who are doing good.

Again, in a general sense, not saying there's no exceptions. Verse four, for it is God's servant for your good. Because if you do wrong, you should be afraid because it does not carry the sword for no reason. It's God's servant.

It's an avenger that brings wrath on the one who does wrong. Therefore, he says, you must submit not only because of wrath, not only because of what they can do to you, you should also do so for conscience sake. In other words, you and I, we submit to these authorities, not because they can punish us or make our lives miserable. We do so because we recognize that these authorities are God's servant. And so in disobeying them in a way, we're disobeying God. By the way, this is not the only authority that Paul ever talks about this way. I mean, Paul tells children, for example, when he feeds and seeks to obey their parents as unto the Lord, which means that when they are under, when a child is in the house of a parent, they are submitting to God by submitting to their parents. And disobedience to their parents is disobedience to God because for a while, the parent stands in the place of God. In Colossians three, Paul would say this, even in relations of employees to employers, when they've got a legitimate place of authority and you reject and disobey their rightful authority, then in a way you are rejecting the authority of God in your life. Verse six, and for this reason, you pay taxes since the authorities are God's servants, continually attending to these tasks.

That phrase continually attending means it's hard work. We all tend to focus on the controversial stuff that government workers do, but you realize, of course, that the vast majority of government work, whether we're talking about the president of the United States, or whether we're talking about the social worker, whatever political party that leader happens to belong to, the vast majority of what they do are providing things that most of us are grateful for. The roads that we drive on, for example, services like 911, zoning ordinances, international trade agreements, protection from criminal activity with the police, national defense, these things Paul says is hard work. And for that reason, we pay taxes and we ought to do even that with a measure of gratefulness. I know that's a hard teaching, but that's what it says. All right, okay, here we go. Verse seven, pay your obligations to everyone. Taxes to those you owe taxes and tolls to those you owe tolls.

So here's looking at you, annoying camera that takes my picture every time I travel toward carry on highway 540, okay? You are actually mentioned in scripture, all right? Respect, give respect to those you owe respect and honor to those you owe honor. Now you might be asking at this point, why in the book of Romans does Paul put this little section in there? I mean, if you remember in Romans 12, Paul had gone through this really grand eloquent section about responding to the gospel, how the gospel reshapes all of our relationships. And if you understand the gospel makes you love people and that starts in the church, he said, and then it makes you love your friends in a very committed way. And it even makes you love your enemies. And you're like, well, that makes sense. The gospel transforms my relationships of love, but then almost seemingly randomly, he tucks this little discussion in here about the government. You're like, why don't still quite get how that fits the flow? Well, I think it's in there for three reasons that I can tell.

All right, here they are. Number one, first, I would say this is Paul's application of his instruction to leave vengeance to God, or at least the first application of it. You remember in chapter 12, Paul said, never take vengeance on yourself, but leave it to God. Well, one of the ways that God executes vengeance, Paul tells us on earth is through government authorities. Now, of course, it's not the ultimate way that he does and government certainly gets a lot wrong, but in one sense, governments are his gift standing in for him as his representative to execute justice on his behalf. This is literally what Paul says, governments are God's servant. And again, I will tell you when Paul wrote this, none of the governing officials are Christians.

All right, so that's the first reason it's in there is that's the application of that. Second, for the first century church, one of the primary places they would have had to overcome evil with good would have been in their relationship with governing authorities. Remember chapter 12, he had also said that, he had said, hey, you got to overcome when people do evil to you, you got to do good. And he says, you got to bless those who curse you. Well, many of those who were inflicting evil on the Christians and many of those cursing the early Christians were governing authorities. And the way that you are to overcome them, Paul explains, is by submitting, by honoring, by obeying them, even when they don't always deserve it.

And sometimes they're doing things that are wrong. In chapter 12, verse 18, Paul had told them as much as possible, as much as possible, you need to live at peace with everybody. Now, again, this is the application of that verse. He's saying as much as you can live at peace with the government by honoring and obeying them from your heart wherever you can, in a way that doesn't violate your conscience. The third reason, this section I believe is in the letter.

Many scholars believe, and I think this is correct, that Paul expected Caesar, or at least somebody on Caesar's behalf to read this letter. And so Paul wanted to make clear that his intentions were not to overthrow the government. We know of course, that many of the religious philosophies of the world have as one of their primary goals, the removal of existing governments and the replacement of that government with a government led by leaders of the new religion. Certainly, for example, if you think historically with Islam, that's what it's been like, that removal of governments and replacing it with Sharia law. Now I will say that many of my Muslim friends tell me that is not their intention here in the United States.

And I believe them, I believe them. But at least throughout history, you can see that that was one of certain followers of Islam's aim. Many Jews in Paul's days were like that. They believed God wanted them to overthrow Rome and establish his kingdom.

And so they were just biding their time until they could pull it off and they were doing little sneak attacks. So you know anything about Jewish history, Masada and Spartacus and all that whole deal, that was zealots that were trying to overthrow Rome and replace the rule of Rome with what they believed was the rule of God. They were called zealots. In fact, we know at least one of Jesus's earliest disciples, one of his 12 was Simon the zealot, somebody that was part of that. Yet Jesus had made abundantly clear, he made abundantly clear in his time with Simon and all the other disciples that that was not his intention for his church. We know that because right before the crucifixion, Peter picks up a sword to fight for Jesus and Jesus tells him, put it away, put it away because my kingdom is not of this world.

And because it's not of this world, you should not use physical force in order to bring it in. Jesus made it abundantly clear that his followers were to offer their lives for their enemies, not take the lives of their enemies, just like he offered his life for us. Our role, Paul wants to make it clear that our role is not to overthrow human governments, to influence human governments, yes. To be salt and light in those governments, yes. To speak prophetically to rulers and those in authority and rebuke them for unrighteousness and warn them of judgment to come like John the Baptist did to Herod, absolutely. But that is different than thinking that Christians are supposed to bring in God's rule with themselves as the rulers. You wanna nerd out for just a minute, okay?

There's about 20% of you that'll really enjoy the next three minutes, the rest of you, just hang on. John Stott, the late John Stott, one of the most famous Christian scholars of the previous century, said that there are basically four ways that Christians relate to the government. Three are wrong, one's right.

Here they are, and you can look at this through history. The first way we'll call theocracy, and that's where we believe the church controls the state, right? Think Vatican City, think if you go to Islam, the rule in places like Saudi Arabia, the church or the religious institution controls the state. Wrong, very bad, okay?

Always leads to disaster. Erastianism, that's where the state controls the church. Think Russia, think China, where the church submits to the state and does so by permission of the state, I would say equally as bad, if not worse. Then you've got Constantinianism, that's a compromise in which the state favors the church. The church makes accommodations with the state in order to preserve its favored status.

You can see there's several places throughout history, certainly many parts of old Europe would have been in this category. Partnership, that's the fourth category, and that's where church and state recognize that each of them has a God-given responsibility, and they encourage and collaborate with each other in fulfilling these roles. They recognize that God has given to each a sphere, and they both exist in the same society, and they support each other and kind of create space for each other, okay? John Stott would say, and I would certainly agree with them, that that one is what Paul seems to be subscribing here in Romans 13. Thanks for listening to Summit Life with Pastor J.D.

Greer. For more information about this ministry, visit us at jdgreer.com. Did you know Pastor J.D. has a brand new book coming out? It's called 12 Truths and a Lie, Answers to Life's Biggest Questions. In this newest work, he unpacks what the gospel has to say about some of life's biggest questions, like, what's my purpose?

And how do I know for sure I'll go to heaven? There's also a special podcast you'll want to listen to that coincides exactly with this new book as well, so be sure to check that out too. The book actually releases on December 5, but we have a very special offer for our Summit Life listening family. If you reserve your copy right now, you'll receive early access to additional bonus material from the book, and this is content that you don't want to miss. To pre-order your copy of 12 Truths and a Lie, just head over to jdgreer.com.

That's J-D-G-R-E-E-A-R dot com. Now, let's get back to today's teaching. Once again, here's Pastor J.D. Paul wants to make clear in this letter that he is, when he comes, he wants Caesar to understand that he's not coming as a political agitator. He's coming as a missionary apostle, and he wants the Roman Christians to understand that their role is to influence their government but not to overthrow. So those are the three reasons I think Paul put this section in the letter. There are two primary things that I believe you and I are to glean from this passage.

If you're taking notes, this will be your outline for today. The first is, we can see the responsibilities of those who govern. We can see the responsibilities of those who govern.

This is, if you will, a kind of job description for the government. Now, I want to be clear, that's not Paul's main point in this passage. He's not giving an exhaustive political philosophy, but you can still see, sort of as Paul goes quickly, you can see how he conceives of government.

That's the first thing. The second thing you'll see, and this is the most important part, the responsibility of those who are governed. That's most of us, specifically how God wants us to relate to our governments. Now, one crucially important thing to note as we dive in, and this is very, very important, I've already kind of hinted at it a couple times, when Paul wrote these things, none of the authorities were Christian. The authorities that he is referring to were at best unfriendly, and at worst, they were actively hostile toward the church.

They were totally pagan, and in many ways they were hopelessly corrupt. The governments he is talking about were hostile and corrupt and pagan. You see, a big question people often have when we talk through a passage like this one is, well, how am I supposed to honor a political leader when I don't approve of him or her, or when I don't endorse a lot of what they stand for? I can tell you very assuredly, Paul would not have approved of or endorsed the vast majority of what the governing leaders of his day did, and had there been a free election, he might not have voted for a single one of them.

Now, can we just be real for a minute? You think that many of our leaders are batty, and for good cause, I might add, but Caligula, who was Caesar around this time, Caligula was unfit to keep a pet, let alone run an empire. Let me just run you through a quick laundry list of Caligula's greatest accomplishments. First thing he does when he's in office, when he becomes Caesar, he has his mom and brother killed to make sure that they don't challenge his right to the throne. He openly committed incest with three of his sisters.

He frequently would cross-dress and go out in public. He installed his favorite horse, Insititus, as a Senator, and then later promoted him to pro-counsel. I have to ask, what had the horse done as Senator that earned him a promotion to pro-counsel, right? I mean, how do you even vote when you're a horse in the Senate? All in favor say aye. All opposed? Wait for it.

Okay, you get it, right? This is Caligula. Caligula once got mad at the weather. He went and he declared official war by the Roman Empire on Neptune, the Roman god of the sea. He ordered battalions of Roman soldiers to go out to the sea and whip the waves with their swords and bring home seashells like plunder from Neptune's domain. He had the heads of statues of deities in Rome removed and replaced with a bust of his own. I mean, just imagine if President Obama or President Trump superimposed their face on every statue of Jesus in Washington. Often during gladiatorial games, which were cruel enough, Caligula would take random people from the crowds and throw them into the arena to be attacked by the wild animals just to entertain himself. But the point is, this was no Abe Lincoln.

This was not even a James A. Garfield. After that, you got Claudius, who may have been a hair less crazy, but was every bit as cruel. And then Claudius hands over the throne to Nero. And when I say hands over, I mean that Nero's mom killed Claudius in his sleep so Nero could become Caesar. Nero turns out, of course, to be one of the cruelest, most sadistic Christian killers of all time. Nero intentionally, or at least it is believed so, intentionally set fire to Rome and then stood on his balcony and played the harp like he was some kind of tragic poet. We know that he blamed Christians for the fire and used that as a pretext to crucify hundreds and thousands of them. We know that he held a party once where he lit his courtyard up every 20 or 30 feet or so with burning Christians as a lantern. Another time he got mad at his pregnant wife and kicked her to death.

He felt bad about it later, so he had a boy who looked similar to his wife, castrated, and then he married the boy and called that boy by his wife's name. Ladies and gentlemen, it is into this context that Paul says, be subject to the governing authorities and honor them. So let's just be easy saying, well, I just can't honor a political leader that I don't respect as a person and whose policies I don't approve of. Tim Keller says it this way. He says the increasingly secular West is only just beginning to experience the level of hostility that first century believers faced.

The 21st century persecuted church, places like China, of course, Afghanistan, and those places, they experience it every day. It is this type of state to which Paul tells the Christian to submit to. Okay, so here we go.

Here we go. First thing, what are the responsibilities? Number one, of those who govern. This is again, if you will, the state's job description. All right, government is God's servant, Paul says, for your good. If you do wrong, you'd be afraid because it doesn't bear the sword for no reason. It's God's servant, an avenger that brings wrath on the one who does wrong. Two things that I see from that verse that are part of this job description. The first one brings wrath on the one who does wrong.

If you're writing things down, write that down as letter A, they punish the bad. It doesn't carry the sword for no reason. The sword represents, of course, the power to punish, the power to make war. Now, some of you see sword and you wonder whether Paul is endorsing capital punishment or whether he is endorsing just war. Certainly the sword was a symbol of violence, lethal violence. You're not getting spanked with the sword.

If you were disobedient to the one who wields the sword, you got stabbed with it and you died. But I do want to say this passage does not address all the complexities that are inherent in the capital punishment question. For example, what crimes should it be administered for? What is a reasonable burden of proof?

Is it administered fairly and equitably among social classes and ethnicities? There are major questions that need our consideration that Paul doesn't get into here, but you can at least see that Paul doesn't see the concept itself as evil. That is affirmed in other places like Acts 25, 11, where Paul says to Festus, one of the Roman rulers, he says, hey, if I've done anything worthy of death, I do not object to die. What Paul is showing you there by implication is that he saw some things as worthy of death. But just to reiterate, the point of this passage is not to discuss the ins and outs of lethal force.

It's not to outline a just war policy. The point of this passage is to say that the government bears the responsibility of punishing the wrongdoer. And when they do that, they do it in his name, whether they are Christians or not, whether they know it or not. And because of that, they're going to be unaccountable to him because it is his sword that they bear. They are verse three, God's servants in doing so. And thus they should do it with diligence and justice as unto him. You see when governments allow injustice to thrive, whether that is the strong trampling the weak, a criminal trampling the rights of an ordinary citizen, the cause of the immigrant being trampled in the courts, the foster child in the home, the unborn in the womb, the elderly with a predatory lender, a private individual having their religious freedoms crushed by a powerful corporation.

When governments allow these things to happen, they are failing at their God-given jobs. And God says, they'll give an account to me for that. The government bears the responsibility to protect its citizen from enemies at home and abroad. And Paul says they are given the sword or the gun or the bomb for that reason.

And when they use it, they use it in his name, whether they are Christians or not. If you are in government, what that means is that you must pursue those purposes with diligence, with justice and humility, and do it before God, because you will give an account to God for that. So that's the first part of what they do. Second part, second phrase, verse four, is another little phrase for your good. For your good, you underline that. You might wanna write that down as promote the good. They are there to promote the good.

Now, again, I wanna be careful here, folks, because I don't wanna read too much into Paul's words. Because again, Paul's not trying to lay out an exhaustive political philosophy, but we know that one of government's jobs is to promote the good in society, the general welfare of their citizens. That's certainly how healthy governments have seen themselves throughout history. I mean, it's in our own constitution, right? You know the preamble of the constitution, right? We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, to establish justice, to ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, right? You can see even in Jefferson's words here in the Constitutional Congress, that understanding that there is a defense, there's a protection aspect, and there's also a promotion of the general welfare aspect. Again, this is not the place to go into what goes into each category and to flesh them out.

It's just sort of give you a broad overview. Tim Keller points out that Paul's words here, avoid both extreme libertarianism and extreme liberalism. Here's what he says, Christians need to be wary of extreme ideological views on the role of government. On the one hand, it is hard to find biblical support for the very conservative view that governments should do nothing but basic law enforcement. On the other hand, the Bible cannot support the very liberal socialist view of the government of savior, where the government takes over everything and the government ends up taking care of all the people.

The Bible wouldn't lead you to either one of those. It's a limited way that it proves as government, but it's there for the good and for the punishment of the bad, all right? Everybody still with me? All right, good. Those are the responsibilities of the government.

Now, here we go. Number two, the most important part of the passage, what are the responsibilities of the governed? Notice that Paul speaks here in terms of obligations. Verse seven, I see four obligations of the governed to the government.

Here we are, letter A, submit. Verse five, submit means you obey the laws, you pay your taxes, your tolls, et cetera. And you do so again, verse five, not just because of wrath, not just because they can make your life miserable. You do so as a matter of conscience.

That means you obey the government authorities, whether you think you'll get caught or not. So much to consider as we look toward an election very soon. Biblical wisdom is always the best wisdom when it comes to challenging topics like this. Pastor JD Greer titled this message, hashtag not my kingdom, here on Summit Life. You know, Romans is an important and powerful book and in it, Paul invites us to mind the depths of the gospel like never before. As we journey through the end of this book together, we'll continue to understand God's righteousness, our unrighteousness apart from him, the significance of God's son, Jesus Christ, and the implications of the gospel message for our everyday lives.

And that's the subject of our newest Bible study. It's the second part of Pastor Tim Keller's two-part study through the book of Romans called In View of God's Mercy. Give by calling 866-335-5220. That's 866-335-5220. Or give online at jdgreer.com. And if you're wondering about the first volume, you can also request that when you give. Complete the set today. I'm Molly Bittovitch inviting you to join us tomorrow when we'll conclude our message called hashtag not my kingdom. We learned that while we should submit to authority, we are also under God's greater claim. Listen Wednesday to Summit Life with JD Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by JD Greer Ministries.