_CHRISTIAN DUTY; IN CIVIL LIFE AND OTHERWISE: LOVE_
ROMANS xiii. 1-10
A new topic now emerges, distinct, yet in close and natural connexion.
We have been listening to precepts for personal and social life, all
rooted in that inmost characteristic of Christian morals,
self-surrender, self-submission to God. Loyalty to others in the Lord
has been the theme. In the circles of home, of friendship, of the
Church; in the open field of intercourse with men in general, whose
personal enmity or religious persecution was so likely to cross the
path--in all these regions the Christian was to act on the principle
of supernatural submission, as the sure way to spiritual victory.
The same principle is now carried into his relations with the State.
As a Christian, he does not cease to be a citizen, to be a subject.
His deliverance from the death-sentence of the Law of God only binds
him, in his Lord's name, to a loyal fidelity to human statute; limited
only by the case where such statute may really contradict the supreme
divine law. The disciple of Christ, as such, while his whole being has
received an emancipation unknown elsewhere, is to be the faithful
subject of the Emperor, the orderly inhabitant of his quarter in the
City, the punctual taxpayer, the ready giver of not a servile yet a
genuine deference to the representatives and ministers of human
authority.
This is he to do for reasons both general and special. In general, it
is his Christian duty rather to submit than otherwise, where
conscience toward God is not in the question. Not weakly, but meekly,
he is to yield rather than resist in all his intercourse, purely
personal, with men; and therefore with the officials of order, as men.
But in particular also, he is to understand that civil order is not
only a desirable thing, but divine; it is the will of God for the
social Race made in His Image. In the abstract, this is absolutely so;
civil order is a God-given law, as truly as the most explicit precepts
of the Decalogue, in whose Second Table it is so plainly implied all
along. And in the concrete, the civil order under which the Christian
finds himself to be is to be regarded as a real instance of this great
principle. It is quite sure to be imperfect, because it is necessarily
mediated through human minds and wills. Very possibly it may be
gravely distorted, into a system seriously oppressive of the
individual life. As a fact, the supreme magistrate for the Roman
Christians in the year 58 was a dissolute young man, intoxicated by
the discovery that he might do almost entirely as he pleased with the
lives around him; by no defect however in the idea and purpose of
Roman law, but by fault of the degenerate world of the day. Yet civil
authority, even with a Nero at its head, was still in principle a
thing divine. And the Christian's attitude to it was to be always that
of a willingness, a purpose, to obey; an absence of the resistance
whose motive lies in self-assertion. Most assuredly his attitude was
not to be that of the revolutionist, who looks upon the State as a
sort of belligerent power, against which he, alone or in company,
openly or in the dark, is free to carry on a campaign. Under even
heavy pressure the Christian is still to remember that civil
government is, in its principle, "of God." He is to reverence the
Institution in its idea. He is to regard its actual officers, whatever
their personal faults, as so far dignified by the Institution that
their governing work is to be considered always first in the light of
the Institution. The most imperfect, even the most erring,
administration of civil order is still a thing to be respected before
it is criticized. In its principle, it is a "_terror not to good
works, but to the evil_."
It hardly needs elaborate remark to shew that such a precept, little
as it may accord with many popular political cries of our time, means
anything in the Christian but a political servility, or an
indifference on his part to political wrong in the actual course of
government. The religion which invites every man to stand face to face
with God in Christ, to go straight to the Eternal, knowing no
intermediary but His Son, and no ultimate authority but His Scripture,
for the certainties of the soul, for peace of conscience, for dominion
over evil in himself and in the world, and for more than deliverance
from the fear of death, is no friend to the tyrants of mankind. We
have seen how, by enthroning Christ in the heart, it inculcates a
noble inward submissiveness. But from another point of view it
equally, and mightily, develops the noblest sort of individualism. It
lifts man to a sublime independence of his surroundings, by joining
him direct to God in Christ, by making him the Friend of God. No
wonder then that, in the course of history, Christianity, that is to
say the Christianity of the Apostles, of the Scriptures, has been the
invincible ally of personal conscience and political liberty, the
liberty which is the opposite alike of licence and of tyranny. It is
Christianity which has taught men calmly to die, in face of a
persecuting Empire, or of whatever other giant human force, rather
than do wrong at its bidding. It is Christianity which has lifted
innumerable souls to stand upright in solitary protest for truth and
against falsehood, when every form of governmental authority has been
against them. It was the student of St Paul who, alone before the
great Diet, uttering no denunciation, temperate and respectful in his
whole bearing, was yet found immovable by Pope and Emperor: "_I can
not otherwise; so help me God_." We may be sure that if the world
shuts the Bible it will only the sooner revert, under whatever type of
government, to essential despotism, whether it be the despotism of the
master, or that of the man. The "individual" indeed will "wither." The
Autocrat will find no purely independent spirits in his path. And what
then shall call itself, however loudly, "Liberty, Fraternity,
Equality," will be found at last, where the Bible is unknown, to be
the remorseless despot of the personality, and of the home.
It is Christianity which has peacefully and securely freed the slave,
and has restored woman to her true place by the side of man. But then,
Christianity has done all this in a way of its own. It has never
flattered the oppressed, nor inflamed them. It has told impartial
truth to them, and to their oppressors. One of the least hopeful
phenomena of present political life is the adulation (it cannot be
called by another name) too frequently offered to the working classes
by their leaders, or by those who ask their suffrages. A flattery as
gross as any ever accepted by complacent monarchs is almost all that
is now heard about themselves by the new master-section of the State.
This is not Christianity, but its parody. The Gospel tells
uncompromising truth to the rich, but also to the poor. Even in the
presence of pagan slavery it laid the law of duty on the slave, as
well as on his master. It bade the slave consider his obligations
rather than his rights; while it said the same, precisely, and more at
length, and more urgently, to his lord. So it at once avoided
revolution and sowed the living seed of immense, and salutary, and
ever-developing reforms. The doctrine of spiritual equality, and
spiritual connexion, secured in Christ, came into the world as the
guarantee for the whole social and political system of the truest
ultimate political liberty. For it equally chastened and developed the
individual, in relation to the life around him.
Serious questions for practical casuistry may be raised, of course,
from this passage. Is resistance to a cruel despotism never
permissible to the Christian? In a time of revolution, when power
wrestles with power, which power is the Christian to regard as
"_ordained of God_"? It may be sufficient to reply to the former
question that, almost self-evidently, the absolute principles of a
passage like this take for granted some balance and modification by
concurrent principles. Read without any such reserve, St Paul leaves
here no alternative, under any circumstances, to submission. But he
certainly did not mean to say that the Christian must submit to an
imperial order to sacrifice to the Roman gods. It seems to follow that
the letter of the precept does not pronounce it inconceivable that a
Christian, under circumstances which leave his action unselfish,
truthful, the issue not of impatience but of conviction, might be
justified in positive resistance; such resistance as was offered to
oppression by the Huguenots of the Cevennes, and by the Alpine Vaudois
before them. But history adds its witness to the warnings of St Paul,
and of his Master, that almost inevitably it goes ill in the highest
respects with saints who "take the sword," and that the purest
victories for freedom are won by those who "endure grief, suffering
wrongfully," while they witness for right and Christ before their
oppressors. The Protestant pastors of Southern France won a nobler
victory than any won by Jean Cavalier in the field of battle when, at
the risk of their lives, they met in the woods to draw up a solemn
document of loyalty to Louis XV.; informing him that their injunction
to their flocks always was, and always would be, "_Fear God, honour
the King._"
Meanwhile Godet, in some admirable notes on this passage, remarks that
it leaves the Christian not only not bound to aid an oppressive
government by active co-operation, but amply free to witness aloud
against its wrong; and that his "submissive but firm conduct is itself
a homage to the inviolability of authority. Experience proves that it
is in this way all tyrannies have been morally broken, and all true
progress in the history of humanity effected."
What the servant of God should do with his allegiance at a
revolutionary crisis is a grave question for any whom it may unhappily
concern. Thomas Scott, in a useful note on our passage, remarks that
"perhaps nothing involves greater difficulties, in very many
instances, than to ascertain to whom the authority _justly_
belongs.... Submission in all things lawful to 'the existing
authorities' is our duty at all times and in all cases; though in
civil convulsions ... there may frequently be a difficulty in
determining which are 'the existing authorities.'" In such cases "the
Christian," says Godet, "will submit to the new power as soon as the
resistance of the old shall have ceased. In the actual state of
matters he will recognize the manifestation of God's will, and will
take no part in any reactionary plot."
As regards the problem of forms or types of government, it seems clear
that the Apostle lays no bond _of conscience_ on the Christian. Both
in the Old Testament and in the New a just monarchy appears to be the
ideal. But our Epistle says that "there is _no power_ but of God." In
St Paul's time the Roman Empire was in theory, as much as ever, a
republic, and in fact a personal monarchy. In this question, as in so
many others of the outward framework of human life, the Gospel is
liberal in its applications, while it is, in the noblest sense,
conservative in principle.
We close our preparatory comments, and proceed to the text, with the
general recollection that in this brief paragraph we see and touch as
it were the corner-stone of civil order. One side of the angle is the
indefeasible duty, for the Christian citizen, of reverence for law, of
remembrance of the religious aspect of even secular government. The
other side is the memento to the ruler, to the authority, that God
throws His shield over the claims of the State only because authority
was instituted not for selfish but for social ends, so that it belies
itself if it is not used for the good of man.
[Sidenote: Ver. 1.] =Let every soul,= every person, who has "presented
his body a living sacrifice," =be submissive to the ruling
authorities;= manifestly, from the context, the authorities of the
State. =For there is no authority except by God[223]; but the existing
authorities have been appointed by God.= That is, the _imperium_ of
the King Eternal is absolutely reserved; an authority not sanctioned
by Him is nothing; man is no independent source of power and law. But
then, it has pleased God so to order human life and history, that His
will in this matter is expressed, from time to time, in and through
the actual constitution of the state. [Sidenote: Ver. 2.] =So that the
opponent of the authority withstands the ordinance of God,= not merely
that of man; =but the withstanders will on themselves bring sentence
of judgment;= not only the human crime of treason, but the charge, in
the court of God, of rebellion against His will. This is founded on
the idea of law and order, which means by its nature the restraint of
public mischief and the promotion, or at least protection, of public
good. "Authority," even under its worst distortions, still so far
keeps that aim that no human civic power, as a fact, punishes good as
good, and rewards evil as evil; and thus for the common run of lives
the worst settled authority is infinitely better than real anarchy.
[Sidenote: Ver. 3.] =For rulers, as a class (οἱ ἄρχοντες), are not
a terror to the good deed, but to the evil;= such is always the fact
in principle, and such, taking human life as a whole, is the tendency,
even at the worst, in practice, where the authority in any degree
deserves its name. =Now do you wish not to be afraid of the authority?
do what is good, and you shall have praise from it;= the "_praise_,"
at least, of being unmolested and protected. [Sidenote: Ver. 4.] =For
God's agent (διάκονος) he is to you, for what is good;= through his
function God, in providence, carries out His purposes of order. =But
if you are doing what is evil, be afraid; for not for nothing
(εἰκῆ),= not without warrant, nor without purpose, =does he wear his
(τὴν) sword,= symbol of the ultimate power of life and death; =for
God's agent is he, an avenger, unto wrath, for the practiser of the
evil.= [Sidenote: Ver. 5.] =Wherefore,= because God is in the matter,
=it is a necessity to submit, not only because of the wrath,= the
ruler's wrath in the case supposed, =but because of the conscience
too;= because you know, as a Christian, that God speaks through the
state and through its minister, and that anarchy is therefore
disloyalty to Him. [Sidenote: Ver. 6.] =For on this account too you
pay taxes;= the same commission which gives the state the right to
restrain and punish gives it the right to demand subsidy from its
members, in order to its operations; =for God's ministers are they,=
His λειτουργοί, a word so frequently used in sacerdotal connexions
that it well may suggest them here; as if the civil ruler were, in his
province, an almost religious instrument of divine order; =God's
ministers, to this very end persevering= in their task; working on in
the toils of administration, for the execution, consciously or not, of
the divine plan of social peace.
This is a noble point of view, alike for governed and for governors,
from which to consider the prosaic problems and necessities of public
finance. Thus understood, the tax is paid not with a cold and
compulsory assent to a mechanical exaction, but as an act in the line
of the plan of God. And the tax is devised and demanded, not merely as
an expedient to adjust a budget, but as a thing which God's law can
sanction, in the interests of God's social plan. [Sidenote: Ver. 7.]
=Discharge therefore to all men,= to all men in authority, primarily,
but not only, =their dues; the tax, to whom you owe the tax,= on
person and property; =the toll, to whom the toll,= on merchandise;
=the fear, to whom the fear,= as to the ordained punisher of wrong;
=the honour, to whom the honour,= as to the rightful claimant in
general of loyal deference.
Such were the political principles of the new Faith, of the mysterious
Society, which was so soon to perplex the Roman statesman, as well as
to supply convenient victims to the Roman despot. A Nero was shortly
to burn Christians in his gardens as a substitute for lamps, on the
charge that they were guilty of secret and horrible orgies. Later, a
Trajan, grave and anxious, was to order their execution as members of
a secret community dangerous to imperial order. But here is a private
missive sent to this people by their leader, reminding them of their
principles, and prescribing their line of action. He puts them in
immediate spiritual contact, every man and woman of them, with the
Eternal Sovereign, and so he inspires them with the strongest possible
independence, as regards "the fear of man." He bids them know, for a
certainty, that the Almighty One regards them, each and all, as
accepted in His Beloved, and fills them with His great Presence, and
promises them a coming heaven from which no earthly power or terror
can for a moment shut them out. But in the same message, and in the
same Name, he commands them to pay their taxes to the pagan State, and
to do so, not with the contemptuous indifference of the fanatic, who
thinks that human life in its temporal order is God-forsaken, but in
the spirit of cordial loyalty and ungrudging deference, as to an
authority representing in its sphere none other than their Lord and
Father.
It has been suggested that the first serious antagonism of the state
towards these mysterious Christians was occasioned by the inevitable
interference of the claims of Christ with the stern and rigid order of
the Roman Family. A power which could assert the right, the duty, of a
son to reject his father's religious worship was taken to be a power
which meant the destruction of all social order as such; a _nihilism_
indeed. This was a tremendous misunderstanding to encounter. How was
it to be met? Not by tumultuary resistance, not even by passionate
protests and invectives. The answer was to be that of love, practical
and loyal, to God and man, in life and, when occasion came, in
death.[224] Upon the line of that path lay at least the possibility of
martyrdom, with its lions and its funeral piles; but the end of it was
the peaceful vindication of the glory of God and of the Name of Jesus,
and the achievement of the best security for the liberties of man.
Congenially then the Apostle closes these precepts of civil order with
the universal command to love. [Sidenote: Ver. 8.] =Owe nothing to
anyone;= avoid absolutely the social disloyalty of debt; pay every
creditor in full, with watchful care; =except the loving one another.=
Love is to be a perpetual and inexhaustible debt, not as if repudiated
or neglected, but as always due and always paying; a debt, not as a
forgotten account is owing to the seller, but as interest on capital
is continuously owing to the lender. And this, not only because of the
fair beauty of love, but because of the legal duty of it: =For the
lover of his fellow= (τὸν ἕτερον, "_the other man_," be he who he
may, with whom the man has to do) =has fulfilled the law,= the law of
the Second Table, the code of man's duty to man, which is in question
here. He "_has_ fulfilled" it; as having at once entered, in principle
and will, into its whole requirement; so that all he now needs is not
a better attitude but developed information. [Sidenote: Ver. 9.] =For
the, "Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not murder, Thou
shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness,[225] Thou shalt
not covet," and whatever other commandment there is, all is summed up
in this utterance, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself"= (Lev.
xix. 18). [Sidenote: Ver. 10.] =Love works the neighbour no ill;
therefore love is the Law's fulfilment.=
Is it a mere negative precept then? Is the life of love to be only an
abstinence from doing harm, which may shun thefts, but may also shun
personal sacrifices? Is it a cold and inoperative "harmlessness,"
which leaves all things as they are? We see the answer in part in
those words, "_as thyself_." Man "loves _himself_," (in the sense of
nature, not of sin,) with a love which instinctively avoids indeed
what is repulsive and noxious, but does so because it positively likes
and desires the opposite. The man who "loves his neighbour _as
himself_" will be as considerate of his neighbour's feelings as of his
own, in respect of abstinence from injury and annoyance. But he will
be more; he will be actively desirous of his neighbour's good.
"_Working him no evil_," he will reckon it as much "_evil_" to be
indifferent to his positive true interests as he would reckon it
unnatural to be apathetic about his own. "_Working him no evil_," as
one who "_loves him as himself_," he will care, and seek, to work him
good.
"Love," says Leibnitz, in reference to the great controversy on Pure
Love agitated by Fénelon and Bossuet, "is that which finds its
felicity in another's good."[226] Such an agent can never terminate
its action in a mere cautious abstinence from wrong.
The true divine commentary on this brief paragraph is the nearly
contemporary passage written by the same author, 1 Cor. xiii. There,
as we saw above, the description of the sacred thing, love, like that
of the heavenly state in the Revelation, is given largely in
negatives. Yet who fails to feel the wonderful _positive_ of the
effect? That is no merely negative innocence which is greater than
mysteries, and knowledge, and the use of an angel tongue; greater than
self-inflicted poverty, and the endurance of the martyr's flame;
"chief grace below, and all in all above." Its blessed negatives are
but a form of unselfish _action_. It forgets itself, and remembers
others, and refrains from the least needless wounding of them, not
because it wants merely "to live and let live," but because it loves
them, finding its felicity in their good.
It has been said that "love is holiness, spelt short." Thoughtfully
interpreted and applied, the saying is true. The holy man in human
life is the man who, with the Scriptures open before him as his
informant and his guide, while the Lord Christ dwells in his heart by
faith as his Reason and his Power, forgets himself in a work for
others which is kept at once gentle, wise, and persistent to the end,
by the love which, whatever else it does, knows how to sympathize and
to serve.
[223] Read ὑπὸ not ἀπό.
[224] "To believe, to suffer, and to love, was the primitive taste"
(Milner).
[225] This clause is perhaps to be omitted here.
[226] See Card. Bausset, _Vie de Fénelon_, ii. 375. Leibnitz, in a
letter to T. Burnet, quotes the words from a work of his own; _Amare
est felicitate alterius delectari_.