Exceptions Evaluated

The Christian and the government

Well, good evening, everyone. Hopefully everybody got a copy of the notes. If you didn't, there should be more copies by the entrances. And tonight, we're continuing our study of what the Bible says about the Christian and the government. And at this stage, we're focusing on how we as Christians should respond to governing authorities, especially when should we obey and when if ever should we disobey. This is week number four. The first week we looked at what does the New Testament explicitly command us with respect to governing authorities. We looked especially at three of the main passages about that, Romans chapter 13, 1 Peter 2 and 1 Timothy 2, where we see that we are called to submit, to honor, to pray for, to give thanks for, to pay our taxes. Then in the second week, I sort of introduced, gave an overview of what would be some possible exceptions to that. So if the new test is very clear about what the baseline should be, well, when if ever might there be And you can see those listed on the bottom of your notes, because we're going to kind of talk back through them tonight. You'll notice I added a sixth one, which would be conscience. You know, that can kind of fit under, especially the first one, if they're commanding sin, but that was raised. I think that would be worthy of some direct attention, so I kind of separated that into its own category there. But those were sort of introduced week two. Then week three, I said, well, we're going to start trying to evaluate these, look at them, consider, well, how valid are they and when and how should we apply them? And to do that, I said, we're going to have to look more closely at Romans chapter 13. Unfortunately, we couldn't do all of that in one night. So last week we talked through Romans 13. We tried to kind of understand the flow of the argument. So you can see that kind of diagram there on your notes sheet. That's the first half. Especially if you weren't here last week, it'd be helpful to have your Bible open to that chapter. Romans 13 verses 1 through 7. And you can kind of look through and hopefully this helps make sense of what the Apostle Paul is saying there. So just in a very quick nutshell, the overarching main command is be subject to governing authorities. And then there's two main reasons given. Number one, because they're instituted by God. And number two, because they're not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. And then he sort of sums it up, so be subject because of wrath, because they bear the sword, because of God's wrath, because judgment will come if we disobey, but also because of conscience, because we should recognize that it's good to be subject to governing authorities. And then he also commands us to pay our taxes. Now tonight, What we're gonna do is begin going back and looking at those possible exceptions in light of Romans 13 to say, well, do we see that being substantiated there? Or is there anything Romans 13 says that might guide us in how we would apply these exceptions? I wanna think about that together. We will see, we will not necessarily get through all these tonight. If we don't, that's okay. I do wanna try to keep it a bit interactive. One other disclaimer is, We're probably not going to delve into sort of specific examples that might be burning on your hearts and minds. I think for now we kind of want to talk about the principles and then hopefully in some other conversation we can kind of flesh out. But we're certainly going to see that we're going to need a lot of wisdom as we think through specific examples. But tonight, just want to kind of clarify how to go about thinking about those examples in a biblical way. So let's start with the first exception, which is what if the governing authority is commanding sin? In light of Romans 13, does that seem like a valid exception to obey? What do you think? Yes. Okay. And why? Okay. Good. I agree. In Romans, what about in the text of Romans 13? Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So it's, it's already assuming the government's commanding things that are good. Um, also it says

there is no authority except from God and the authorities that exist have been instituted by God.

So even though he's going to go on and apply this to say, well, that's why we should obey. I think at the same time that tells us no authority has the authority to override God's commands. Right? There is no authority except from God and the authorities that exist are appointed by him. Well, then no authority has the authority to say, bow down to this golden statue because we know what God has already commanded. Um, so, you know, again, Paul here, he's trying to stress obeying, but I think, you know, you can, what's implied here is, well, you obey that because you want to obey God. You know, so it's a little bit like, you know, if the parents are going out and they leave the big sister in charge, you know, what do they tell the younger siblings? Obey your sister. They usually don't add a bunch of qualifications like, well, obey her, unless she's explicitly telling you to break the house rules or do something that, you know, we wouldn't want you to do. But they don't have to go in and explain all that. That's sort of implied. Because they are giving this authority and their concern is that the younger siblings aren't going to listen. So I think it's clear, biblically, we saw other clear examples where if the government is commanding explicit sin or forbidding us to obey something God has explicitly commanded, we obey God rather than men. So, that one seems straightforward enough. What about this second exception? This idea that submitting doesn't necessarily mean obeying. Does that seem valid based on this text? What do you think? Yeah? Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's some good points there. Other thoughts? Nate? Yeah. Yeah, I think a couple weeks ago, I mentioned the example of Daniel, who, I mean, I think he kind of exemplifies how it's very godly and right to even when he disobeys, you know, he does so in a way that I think really honors the Lord. And so, yeah, we want to have this heart posture that's submissive even when we're disobeying. But that also doesn't necessarily mean, oh, I can say I'm submitting even while disobeying. as if they're sort of disconnected that way. Yeah. Natalie? Well, so I want to come back to that. Yes. Yep. Okay, yep, we got lots of hands up. Yeah, I think that's well said. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. So, so basically the idea here is, um, you can say, well, universally always we submit, but, Submit doesn't mean obey, so I can sort of, in a more general sense, disobey, but say, but I'm still obeying this, I'm still obeying God here because I have a submissive, respectful posture. I'm recognizing the governing authority is sort of over me, but I don't have to obey them because God just said submit to them. Now, I think, so as I've wrestled with this, I think the, The problem with that is it kind of reduces submission to sort of the attitude and the posture while really kind of minimizing the actual action. And there are a couple reasons I think that sort of clashes with things the text is saying. Number one, because you'll notice the opposite of submit here would be resist. And I think it's a little harder to picture like am I, you know, I'm disobeying the government without resisting them. That seems hard to kind of hold to. The other thing is, as you keep reading, that the second reason why we're commanded to be subject is because the government is not a terror to good conduct but to bad. So in other words, the idea is be subject because then the government isn't going to punish you. If you're being subject, you won't be punished. But, you know, does the government really care whether you submit to them, not including obedience, or whether you obey them? I think Dara was articulating that a moment ago. The idea here seems to be, be subject so that the government won't punish you, which seems like in Paul's mind, submitting and obeying are connected, right? That having this, being subject to the government, yes, it involves an attitude, it involves a posture, it involves an honor and a respect, but it means obeying. But I think as Daniel pointed out, there may be other exceptions where we say, well, you know what, I don't need to obey. And so I think we can say, well, then, yeah, I'm not sort of, commanded to be subject, I don't think I have to talk away into saying I'm being subject even though I'm disobeying, but I think we can still say it's, we want to have that right heart posture. We can still recognize God has put them as governing authorities and we want to do so in a way that would glorify God by reflecting the kind of posture we should have, yeah. It's a great question. So that's why I don't want to try to legislate the specific examples. But yeah, that's the kind of thing. I think it would be great for us to kind of talk about in light of this. Nate? Right. Right. Yeah, because I think the concern is when we start justifying disobeying, we say, but I am submitting, even though I'm disobeying, and we don't really have sort of another basis on which to justify that disobedience. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right, well, let's look next at this third potential exception, which would be what if the governing authorities are promoting what's evil and actually being a terror to what's good? So here, you know, Paul assumes that the government is functioning as God's deacon for our good, and then they're also God's deacons of wrath against evil. But what if the state is doing the reverse? Does that justify disobedience? Nick? OK. Other thoughts? Yeah, so this is kind of tied. We talked about the idea of the lesser magistrates. And does there come a point when sort of the government as a whole or the emperor or whoever's in charge is sort of, even if he's not commanding you specifically to do something sinful, it's like he's causing this oppression or evil sort of for society in such a way that it's right for those who are sort of beneath him to step up and resist for the greater good, for the good of society. Does that clarify? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yep, Daniel. No, I'm not trying to go, like, make, it's more the argument of is there ever those who are lesser, whether we're the general public or you're, you know, sort of the governor instead of the emperor, but for a lower authority, someone in a lesser position to resist the one in the higher position. I think that's the more general principle. So, for now, just think, us as American citizens, do we have a right to sort of resist the government? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think in the text, so if you look at the second reason given, so be subject

for rulers are not a terror to good conduct but to bad.

So Paul's grounding his argument in that. I think when it's manifestly obvious that that's not the case, that the authorities are doing the reverse, such as an extreme case like the Nazis, well, I don't think you come to Romans 13 and say, well, I guess we just have to be subject to the government and sort of sit back idly while the Jews are all massacred. I think, as I understand it, the Nazis would point to this and try to say, well, you're supposed to submit to us. I think that's wrong. So I think there's something here that Paul is grounding the argument in the idea that the government is actually not being a terror to good conduct, but to bad, okay? Sure, yeah, yeah. So yes, when the government is doing the complete opposite here, they're not promoting good, they're promoting evil in a very, very clear way. There comes a point where I think we're justified in disobeying, perhaps even resisting in a more general way. But I think On the other hand, there's a couple things we need to keep in mind. For one, I think we need to be humble in how we evaluate our ability to tell whether the government is promoting good or not. You know, there comes a fairly extreme example where we see, you know, the Nazis murdering Jews. It gets harder with certain policies. I think we need to be careful about sort of concluding a, well, if the government says this, well then that causes this, and this, and this, and this, and therefore they're promoting evil, and we can all disobey. I heard, I mean, in a sermon, you know, someone, I think it was with regard to the stay at home order, and how that was preventing people from working. but people's livelihood depends on working, therefore you're preventing people from providing for their families, therefore it's tantamount to murder. That stream of arguing kind of can get you in a place where you can use this exception to justify lots of things. And so I think we just need to be careful here. I think we can recognize, okay, there's a legitimate exception, but we need to remember for one, I mean, Paul's talking about Rome here. Nero's the emperor. I mean, Rome is far from a perfect, you know, wonderful government where there's no problems, and yet Paul can sort of give this characterization of they are not a terror to good conduct but to bad. And so I think that should challenge us to say, okay, I need to be humble about jumping to that conclusion. Yes, maybe there's a time for that. Yes, some of us are gonna really need the courage that when we do need to stand up, that we're ready to do so. But we gotta be careful about jumping there too quickly. And related to that would also be, I think it's important for us to remember that There's a certain sense with submission is only submission when you disagree. I mean, if, when Paul says,