proportion of _the_ faith,' i.e. according to 'the majestic proportion
of the (objective) faith.' This is the characteristically Latin, as
against the Greek, interpretation, and the Greek is certainly to be
preferred, because 'according to the proportion of our faith' follows
naturally upon 'according as ... the measure of faith' just above;
indeed 'faith' in this context can hardly have assigned to it without
violence the objective meaning which, however, in the context of the
Pastoral Epistles it no doubt frequently bears. Cf. app. note A, p.
205.
[12] _Somersetshire Records_, vol. iv, 1890.
[13] Dr. Jessop, 'Parish Life in England before the Great Pillage,'
_Nineteenth Century_, Jan. 1898, p. 55; cf. also Dom Gasquet on 'The
Layman in the Mediaeval Period,' _Tablet_, Sept. 2, 1899.
{116}
DIVISION V. Sec. 3. CHAPTER XIII. 1-7.
_The Christians and the imperial power._
It is possible that the thought of the innocent victim of injustice and
wrong waiting upon the divine wrath, brings to St. Paul's mind the idea
of the State which exists to represent divine justice in the world, and
minister divine wrath on behalf of the innocent. But, whether this
particular connexion of thought was really in St. Paul's mind or no, at
any rate the previous section has made it plain that the 'love of the
brethren' must extend itself to become a right relation to all men,
whether Christians or not[1]. In particular, therefore, the relation
of the Christians to the imperial authority could not fail to be a
matter which required attention and apostolic counsel. The Jews, whose
theocratic {117} principles made submission to government by 'the
uncircumcised' at least a real abandonment of a religious ideal[2], had
always an instinctive tendency to rebellion; and the Christian church
built upon Judaism might easily have inherited this instinct. The
catholic church of the new covenant, might have claimed to be a
theocracy like that of the old. Especially at Rome, where the Jews
were a vast and formidable body who had recently given trouble and been
expelled[3], the attitude of the Christians, who were identified with
them, might easily be misunderstood. Or on the other hand the Jews
themselves, at Rome as at Thessalonica[4], might represent the
Christians as disloyal to Caesar. Moreover, apart from all unjustified
slanders, the spirit of the 'fifth monarchy men' has seldom been
altogether absent from periods of Christian enthusiasm; and the
restless and undisciplined {118} tendencies at Thessalonica[5], which
the mistaken expectation of the immediate second coming of Christ had
encouraged, were a sign that Christians might easily find it difficult
to settle down as good citizens in the great empire of the world.
St. Paul therefore, here and elsewhere, would make it quite plain that
the catholic church, if it is like the ancient Israel, is like it only
as it was in exile--when the children of Israel were bidden to be good
citizens of the Babylonian empire, and to seek the peace of the city
whither God had caused them to be carried away captive, and to pray
unto the Lord for it, for in the peace thereof they should have
peace[6]. Thus the Church was not a theocracy, but a 'settlement of
strangers and exiles[7],' waiting for the visible establishment of the
kingdom or city of God, and meanwhile maintaining a polity or ordered
social life of their own, but on a voluntary and catholic (or
non-national) basis. Therefore, so long as God maintains 'the present
world,' they must be good citizens of whatever earthly state they
happen to live under. On this basis, then, St. Paul reminds each
single person {119} of the duty of political loyalty. The earthly
state is of God's establishing, as well as the kingdom of Christ, and
fulfils a divine purpose with divine authority. It exists to suppress
moral outrage and lawlessness[8], to maintain justice and right. Its
officers are God's ministers (as truly as the officers of the Church,
though in a different order), and must be obeyed accordingly, under
peril not only of civil punishment for disobedience, but under peril of
divine judgement also, and as a matter of conscience. The good man,
and therefore the good Christian, has nothing to fear from the empire
or its officers. And he will readily, and as a matter of conscience,
pay his tribute as a subject, and his taxes as a citizen, to the proper
authorities, and give to each imperial officer the respect which is his
due.
Let every soul be in subjection to the higher powers: for there is no
power but of God; and the _powers_ that be are ordained of God.
Therefore he that resisteth the power, withstandeth the ordinance of
God: and they that withstand shall receive to themselves judgement.
For rulers are not a terror to the good work, but to the evil. And
wouldest thou have no fear of the power? do {120} that which is good,
and thou shalt have praise from the same: for he is a 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 a minister of God, an avenger
for wrath to him that doeth evil. Wherefore _ye_ must needs be in
subjection, not only because of the wrath, but also for conscience
sake. For for this cause ye pay tribute also; for they are ministers
of God's service, attending continually upon this very thing. Render
to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute _is due_; custom to whom
custom; fear to whom fear; honour to whom honour.
Our Lord, by His whole bearing towards Jewish nationalism and by His
clear prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem, as well as by His
particular injunction to 'render unto Caesar the things that were
Caesar's,' had made it evident to His disciples that the sceptre had
departed from Judah, and had determined the attitude of Christians
towards the empire. They could not indeed be as other inhabitants of
the empire, for they were waiting, and praying, and working, for the
visible establishment of a city and kingdom of God on earth--little as
either the 'times and seasons,' or the character and manner, of that
city and kingdom had been revealed to them. Thus the Roman empire
could not but be in their eyes a kingdom of this world destined for
overthrow. But it was by the methods of meekness, and by purely
spiritual weapons, that the kingdom of {121} God was to come, and the
great overthrow, whatever it should prove to be, was to be effected.
This at least was certain; and meanwhile the Roman empire represented
the divine principle of authority and order, and must be obeyed.
St. Paul no doubt had, more than any other apostle, a real feeling for
the empire and the city of which he was a citizen. Moreover, he saw in
the organization of the empire a great framework and vehicle for the
establishment and spread of the catholic church. And hitherto
certainly (at least, since the fatal moment of Pilate's weakness) the
Church had continually experienced the assistance of the imperial
authorities. It was a misused _spiritual_ authority, before which the
protest had to be made, 'We must obey God rather than man[9].' It was
the Jewish authorities who persecuted the Church. It was the Jewish
king who put James to death. At Paphos, Thessalonica, Corinth,
Ephesus, the imperial authorities had been more or less friendly, and
even at Philippi they had been reduced to an attitude of apology by the
bare mention of Roman citizenship. St. Paul's experiences, therefore,
had prepared him to 'appeal unto Caesar,' and to expect justice {122}
and freedom for himself and his cause. Even the beginnings of the
experience of imperial hostility and persecution did not quash or even
weaken this attitude in St. Peter[10]. St. Peter and St. Paul idealize
the empire almost as if it could do no wrong, and the righteous had
nothing to fear from it. Of course, when this expectation had been
rudely shattered--when the imperial authority had come chiefly to mean
the persecution of the saints--an opposite sort of idealism takes
place, and Rome appears as the great 'beast' of violence in the
Apocalypse of John. Both idealizations represent truth--the truth of
what the State is meant to be on the one side, and of what it may
become on the other. But after considerable experience of persecution,
Clement of Rome is still full of admiration for the divine order of the
imperial rule, and recognizes the duty of obedience to his 'rulers and
governors upon earth,' side by side with the duty of obedience to
'God's almighty and most excellent name'; and as it is God who has
given the rulers their authority, he prays for grace to submit to them,
and offers rich prayer for their welfare and that of the empire. And
the spirit lived on in the Christian {123} church through all the
persecutions, and the apologists for Christianity loved to protest
their loyalty to the empire, and to think of their church as 'the soul
of the world,' maintaining it by prayer and virtue in the midst of
impiety and corruption.
In England this passage has often been put to two conspicuously
unjustifiable uses. First, it was the stronghold of the maintainers of
'the divine right of kings' and of 'passive obedience.' In reality it
asserts the divine right of civil authority, but not of any particular
kind of civil authority. Indeed the government of the empire was still
nominally a republic in its fundamental forms, though it was becoming a
despotism in fact. And supposing the senate and people had--as is of
course conceivable--reasserted their authority over their 'emperors,'
or military officers, the Christian doctrine of divine right would have
afforded no guidance as to which of the claimants to authority had the
divine will on its side. What is barely asserted is the divine right
of the existing civil authority, democratic or regal. And while our
passage exalts the normal duty of obedience, it suggests no answer to
the question--Is there not a point where a government so manifestly
fails to {124} maintain the divine order in the world, or to represent
the will of God and the best interests of the people, that it deserves
to be put an end to? At such a point Christianity can only serve to
reinforce the natural instincts of justice and right.
And again, the words, 'the powers that be are ordained of God:
therefore he that resisteth the power withstandeth the ordinance of
God,' have often been used in England to justify a claim on behalf of
the State to coerce and govern the Church and the consciences of men in
spiritual matters. But such an idea is utterly alien to the mind of
the New Testament. In the matters which concern our spiritual
salvation, the authority which is to discipline and control us is the
binding and loosing, absolving and retaining, authority which is
entrusted not to the State, but to the Church. Attempts are recorded
in history on the part of the State to crush out the Church, and on the
part of the Church to usurp the authority of the State and use its
weapons. Such attempts, we trust, belong to past history. An attempt,
too, specially identified with England, has been made to identify a
national Church and State as only different aspects of the same
society, so that the government of the national Church can be more
{125} or less fused in that of the State. But whatever may be said of
such an attempt in the past, in our modern England the plain facts of
the political and religious situation are flatly repugnant to it; and
there can evidently be no reasonable religious government in the Church
of England till it is conducted again in obedience to the fundamental
Christian principle that our national and local Church is part of a
great catholic society, which Christ endowed with an independent
spiritual authority, and a law and constitution and ministers of its
own. The State may need an established national church as much as ever
to enable it to fulfil its highest functions, but any 'Establishment'
in these days must be consistent with the fullest recognition of the
spiritual and political liberties of those members of the State who
belong to other religious bodies, and also must be based upon
recognition that the Church and State are fundamentally distinct, and
relatively independent societies.
But it behoves us Churchmen, not only to assert the spiritual liberties
of the Church, but also to realize a great deal more fully than we do,
the divine authority of the civil ministers and civil laws in their own
department. The State {126} exists to embody and represent in the
world the divine justice, which is to be the basis of the government of
men. Its ministers--magistrates, legislators, officers of justice--are
'God's ministers': laws which are passed by the State in fulfilment of
its divine mission--laws intended to maintain the health and prosperity
of the people as a whole--have a divine sanction; and we Churchmen can
only be what the Church should be, 'the soul of the world,' if we make
it a matter of conscience, a great deal more deliberately than it is at
present with most of us, to aid vigorously in the administration of the
good laws which already exist, national and municipal, and to promote
intelligently and enthusiastically the purposes of civil government by
helping towards better laws; so that our government, as a whole, may
become a continually completer image of the equitable and impartial
righteousness of God.
[1] Cf. 2 Pet. i. 7, 'In your love of the brethren supply love,' i.e.
let the temper bred inside the closer bond of Christian fellowship
extend itself universally.
[2] Deut. xvii. 15, 'Thou mayest not put a foreigner over thee, which
is not thy brother.'
[3] Acts xviii. 2. 'Claudius had commanded all the Jews to depart from
Rome,' cf. Suetonius, Claud. 25. 'The Jews who had been persistently
breaking into disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus (Christ?) he
expelled from Rome.' We cannot certainly explain these words, but St.
Paul knew all about the occurrence from Priscilla and Aquila, whom the
expulsion had brought across his path at Corinth.
[4] Acts xvii. 7.
[5] 1 Thess. iv. 11; v. 14; 2 Thess. iii. 6.
[6] Jer. xxix. 7; cf. 1 Tim. ii. 2.
[7] 1 Pet. i. 11. The word for such a 'settlement of strangers,'
_paroecia_, has become, by a suggestive history, our 'parish.'
[8] Cf. 2 Thess. ii. 6. 'That which restraineth' the outbreak of
lawlessness is (almost certainly) the empire, and 'he that restraineth'
(ver. 7) the emperor.
[9] Acts v. 29.
[10] 1 Pet. ii. 13-17.
{127}
DIVISION V. Sec. 4. CHAPTER XIII. 8-10.
_The summary debt._
Christians are willingly to pay tribute and tax as a debt, a thing due
in God's sight to His ministers. But this obligation is a specimen of
innumerable obligations which we owe to our 'neighbours'--debts only
limited by human need. And the Christian is to take a wide view of his
obligations, and to let there be no legitimate claim upon him
unfulfilled, no debt unpaid, except the one which a man ought always to
be paying and still to be owing, for it is infinite--the debt of love.
Here, in loving each other man with the same real regard to his
personal interests as we devote to our own, is the satisfaction of the
moral law. All the particular 'commandments'--those of the Second
Table, and any other there may be--are comprehended in this one. For
love can do no harm to any other, and can therefore break no
commandment.
{128}
Owe no man anything, save to love one another: for he that loveth his
neighbour hath fulfilled the law. For this, Thou shalt not commit
adultery, Thou shall not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not
covet, and if there be any other commandment, it is summed up in this
word, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. Love worketh
no ill to his neighbour: love therefore is the fulfilment of the law.
St. Paul gives here a very noticeable expansion to the idea of not
being in debt. In its literal sense we have all of us a horror of it,
at least in theory.
'No debtor's hands are clean
However white they be.'
We must both let that theoretic horror of debt dominate our practice in
money matters, and also expand our idea of 'debts.' According to
Christ's teaching, the priest and Levite did not pay their debt to
their Samaritan neighbour, because they thought him a stranger with no
claim on them. Dives ignored his rich man's debt to Lazarus. Of those
who are to appear on the left hand of Christ's judgement-seat, each
will be condemned because he never realized his debt to Christ in the
persons of all those who had needs to which he might have ministered.
St. Paul, as an apostle, acknowledged his debt {129} to all the Gentile
world[1], and we members of a church, catholic in idea, but as yet so
far from catholic in fact--we Englishmen, members of an imperial and
spreading race, responsible for the name of Christ all over the
world--have a portentous and lamentably unfulfilled debt to the races
of Africa and India, and to the whole world.
We can all think of manifold debts--to the lonely whom we might visit,
the misunderstood whom we might sympathize with, the ignorant whom we
might teach, the weak and oppressed whom we might support and combine,
the sinful whom we might convert and establish in good living; so many
debts to family and friends; so many debts to Englishmen and fellow
Christians, to Africans and Asiatics. Is it not bewildering even to
attempt to realize our debts? And yet, let a man make a beginning, and
all will be well. Let him steadily set himself to behave towards those
whom he employs or those who employ him, towards his domestic servants
or his masters, towards railway porters and shop assistants and others
who minister to his convenience, as being men and women with the same
right to courteous treatment, and to a real opportunity to {130} make
the best of themselves, as he has himself; let him steadily refuse to
'exploit' those immediately concerned with him, or treat them as merely
means to his ends or instruments of his convenience; let him thus
realize his debts to his nearest 'neighbours,' and the whole idea of
humanity, of brotherhood, will be deepened and made real to him.
Serving the few, he will come to serve the many. His prayers will go
before his actions, and enlarge their scope. He will get a habit of
considerateness and thoughtfulness for others, as belonging to Christ,
which will express itself habitually towards all, and especially the
weak. His 'neighbour' will come to mean, as in our Lord's parable and
in St. Paul's expression in this place, any 'other man[2].' And in our
days when the old personal relations of masters to workers have been so
largely merged in the relation of companies to unions or to men and
women in masses, we shall never allow ourselves to forget that
combinations are combinations of individuals, and that neither
individual responsibility, nor responsibility for the individual, can
be obliterated by union or by numbers.
St. Paul, we notice, is here plainly {131} reproducing our Lord's
saying about love and the law[3]; and he would seem to have the
teaching of the parable about the Good Samaritan in his mind; as in the
previous section the saying 'Render unto Caesar the things that are
Caesar's,' and in the end of the preceding one (xii. 14, 19) the
prohibition of vengeance and the injunction of love to enemies in the
Sermon on the Mount. St. Paul's ethical teaching is in fact found to
be throughout based on our Lord's, whether our Lord's words were with
him in a written form or came to him simply in the oral tradition.
And we do well to remember, as we read this familiar passage, that here
is the centre and kernel of Christianity. It is the revelation of a
new and universal duty, based on a revealed relationship of all men to
a common Father: the duty which lies upon all men of loving all men,
because God loves all men with a father's love, or rather because God
is love, and only by the life of love can we share His fellowship[4].
The {132} Christian 'enthusiasm for humanity' has thus its roots in a
disclosure of the character of God, and of His mind towards every man.
[1] Rom. i. 14.
[2] ver. 8, 'his neighbours': margin, 'the other.'
[3] Matt. xxii. 40; cf. Gal. v. 14, and James ii. 8.
[4] It has been commonly said that Christianity almost created a new
word to express the new duty. But this now appears not to be strictly
the case. _Agape_, love, is a word unknown indeed to classical
writers, but it is found in the popular speech of Alexandria in the
second century B.C. See Deissmann, _Bibelstudien_ (Marburg, 1895), p.
80. (I was referred to this work by Dr. Bernard, _Pastoral Epistles_,
p. 24.) Hence, i.e. from the popular speech of Greek Egypt, it passed
into the Greek Bible and so into Christianity.
{133}
DIVISION V. Sec. 5. CHAPTER XIII. 11-14.
_The approach of the day._
And the motive for paying our debts, in this wide sense, is that we
must 'agree with our adversary quickly, while we are with him in the
way,' for the day of account is at hand. This worldly world lies
asleep to the spiritual realities, but its short night--the time of
darkness--is nearly over. The great deliverance is nearer to us than
when we first became Christians. The day of the Lord is almost
dawning. Let us see to it then that all that is only fit for the
darkness is stripped off us: that we are suitably equipped for the day,
so that when it suddenly dawns it shall not put us to shame. Sensual
lusts and loveless passions indulged--gross sins, such as none of the
Christian communities had quite got rid of--will appear improper
conduct indeed when the sun rises. And there is only one garment
proper for the day; it is the garment of Christ's righteousness, or
rather of Christ Himself, with whom we must invest {134} ourselves. As
for our lower nature, it is to be our servant merely--not a master,
whose clamorous demands we are to study to satisfy.
'And this, knowing the season, that now it is high time for you to
awake out of sleep: for now is salvation nearer to us than when we
_first_ believed. The night is far spent, and 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 revelling
and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and
jealousy. But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision
for the flesh, to _fulfil_ the lusts _thereof_.
St. Paul, no doubt, was still in eager expectation of the immediate
second coming of Christ; and that expectation has proved mistaken. Now
our Lord plainly did not mean His disciples to know when His judgement
was to be made manifest, and St. Paul apparently recognized this[1], so
that his immediate anticipation of the end can never have been part of
his faith--never more than the reflection of the eager desire which
filled the heart of the Church. On the other hand, our Lord did mean
His disciples to go on expecting Him. Thus {135} St. Paul's admonition
is as applicable now as ever. The future of the world and of each
nation and institution is precarious: things which seem solid and
strong may crumble and melt; how soon God is to make plain His
judgements, in part or on the whole, we do not know; when each one of
us is to pass by death to the great account we do not know. There is
no reasonable attitude towards the unknown coming of judgement except
to be ready, and, though the darkness of the alienated and godless
world is all around us, to live as children of the light eagerly
expecting the dawning of the day[2].
And to meet Christ we must be like Christ. And to be like Christ we
must be in Christ, clothed with His righteousness, invested with His
new nature, fighting with the weapons of His victorious manhood. The
'evil' which is in ourselves, the unregulated flesh, we can only
'overcome with good'--the good which is Jesus Himself: for it is no
longer we that live in our bare selves, but Christ that liveth in us.
We are baptized into Him, we possess His spirit, we eat His flesh and
drink His blood. What remains is practically to clothe ourselves in
{136} Him[3], appropriating and drawing out into ourselves by acts of
our will His very present help in trouble. So can we become like Him,
and be fitted to see Him as He is[4].