Romans 13:3-6 For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Will you then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good… The civil ruler is — I. A MINISTER OF GOD. 1. Paul does not say he ought to be so, or it would be well if he would consent to be so, but that "he is." It is not in his pleasure not to be so. He must be so, if he rebel against it ever so fiercely. Nero's will might be devilish; every power which he wielded was Divine. He had been appointed to rule the world which he tormented by Him who loved that world. 2. How would such a doctrine affect the Roman Christians? They could not confound vital power with those outside accidents of it which our vulgar nature prompts us to admire when they recollected from whom it came, and they must have hated every wanton exercise of it. The effect of regarding Nero as a minister of God was, no doubt, to make them patient under his government, and afraid to engage in any mad schemes for subverting it. But this faith gave strength to their cries that the earth might be delivered from all her oppressors, assured them that those cries would not be in vain, and made them welcome their own sufferings as steps towards the redemption. 3. Those who attempt to find apologies for tyranny in Scripture, sometimes ask, "If Nero's power was ordained by God, what subjects can pretend that the powers which are over them have some lower origin?" I answer, "Certainly none." And subjects would be most unwise if they wished otherwise. For it imports that every power is a trust, and implies responsibility to a judge whom the greatest criminal cannot escape. Read Roman history in the light of St. Paul's sentence. Every sting of conscience which visited Nero that night when he knew himself to be his mother's murderer was a message to him, "Thou art God's minister, and thou hast used His "sword against thy own flesh and blood." The assassin by whom he fell at last was saying, "Thou art God's minister; and so am I, guilty like thyself, but ordained to call thee to His judgment-seat." 4. Surely, if rulers and people believed this, it would be something more than the notion that they may be brought to the bar of "public opinion." But let those who confess the power of public opinion ask themselves whether it requires any more credulity to acknowledge the presence of a living, personal ruler? II. A minister of God TO THEE. 1. A strange assertion! A minister of God to the Roman world the emperor might be, however little he fulfilled his ministry. But a minister of God to some individual member of the Roman Church, who must have counted it the best privilege of his obscurity that the emperor would never hear of him, never inquire after him, how could he be such to that man? In this way: When a man was taken into the Christian Church, he contracted affinities and obligations to Jew and Greek, barbarian and Scythian, bond and free. But he might easily forget these, and fancy that the Church was an isolated body. The fact of being under a common civil ruler deepened and expanded the doctrine. Nor was the benefit destroyed by the character of the ruler. If he was an oppressor, there was more necessity of falling back on the Source from which his authority proceeded, in prayer that His will might be done on earth as it is in heaven. 2. But I am far more desirous to assert the truth in reference to those rulers who confess their calling and try to fulfil it. So far as they contribute to the health and growth of the body politic, so far they must be ministers of God to each one of us personally. For are they not quickening our hearts and hopes, and enabling us to enter more truly the kingdom of God? It is impossible that all true human rule should not be like the Divine rule in this, that it is most minute when it is most comprehensive; that it calls for the most personal loyalty when it is most generally even and just. III. "A minister of God to thee FOR GOOD." 1. St. Paul writes this to men who might, in a short time, be lighting the city as torches to cover the guilt of him who set it on fire. Well! and was he not, and was not Charles IX in France, and Philip II in the Netherlands? Were they not ministers of God for good to those whom they sent beyond the reach of their crimes, to cry beneath the altar for the day when the earth should no more conceal her blood or cover her slain? And it will be known, some day, to how many men, governments the most accursed have been ministers of good, by leading them from trifling to earnestness, by changing them from reckless plotters into self-denying patriots, by turning their atheism or devil-worship into a grounded faith in the God of Truth. Many such, I fear, will rise up in judgment against those who live in happier circumstances. 2. But the apostle was enabled to proclaim this principle on other grounds. As he believed Christ to be the King of men, he could not help believing that all human society was organised according to the law which He embodied. "The Chief of all is the servant of all." He could not doubt that if the emperor believed this he would be a blessing to the world; that he was a curse to it because he thought the world was to minister to him, and not he to it. He could not doubt that every Christian ought to maintain the truth which Nero set at naught, and that if he did, it would prove itself in his case — Nero would be a minister of God for good to him. 3. How did the faith that there is a constitution for nations, which kings did not create, work itself into the heart of modern Europe? When a mediator between God and man is rejected, you must have an absolute caliph or sultan, and a government carried on by mere officials; you cannot have the confession of a relationship between the sovereign and his subjects, involving mutual obligation. This is involved in the faith of a Son of God and a Son of Man. Whatever has suffocated that faith — be it ecclesiastical pretension, or revolt against that pretension, be it the worship of money, or the worship of a tyrant instead of a father — undermines constitutional liberty. To bring forth that faith in its fulness before the nations which nominally confess it, is to help them to break their political fetters. (F. D. Maurice, M.A.) Parallel Verses KJV: For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same: |
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