Exceptions to Obedience

we must obey God rather than men

, right? It would be sin to obey you. So we are going to obey God instead. So we could go on, there's more examples, but this one is something everybody should agree to. This is very clear in scripture. We do not obey the government if they're commanding sin. We obey God. And some have sort of stopped there and said, well, that's it. Every other time we obey the government, but if they're commanding sin, that and that alone is when we would disobey. You'll see this reflected in the Augsburg Confession. So this was a Lutheran confession from 1530. Article 16 concludes,

therefore, Christians must obey their own government officials and laws except when such command them to sin. Then they must obey God rather than men.

Can anyone think, are there any reasons that we might want to think of exceptions beyond that? Or should we stop there? Thoughts? Yep. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. What if the government's basically, you know, tyrannical? So good. Any other thoughts? Any problems with just sort of saying, well, if it's explicitly commanding us to sin, we disobey. But every other time, we should obey. Anna? At times when the government's goal is to specifically harm others. So I'm thinking like the Nazi regime and demands to turn in people that are known to be Jews. Right. Good. Yep. Nick? Okay. Yep. Good. Yeah. maybe the government's priorities aren't in line with scripture, and so they command us to do things that aren't explicitly sinful in and of themselves, but enough of them add up, and it starts, you know, we've seen this with things like locking down churches, you know, it's not wrong to skip church for a week, unless we're Catholic, but, you know, but to skip church for a year, at some, you know, at what point does it become sin? You get a kind of line there, same with masks, You can come up with other things as well that aren't just, you know, lockdowns but other kinds of things. And I think probably most of the time, it's these things where the government is commanding something that isn't, it's not like you can point to the verse that says, thou shalt do the opposite. But they're introducing a tension where it's like, but God commands these things over here and now you're commanding this. And while maybe they're not totally, completely, directly contradictory, they sort of interfere in some way. So, you know, hypothetically, say the government says, well, churches cannot have more than a hundred members. Well, you know, the Bible doesn't command us that we have to have churches that are bigger than that. Certainly some Christians, you might prefer this strategy. Maybe we should split and plant more churches and stay smaller. But on the other hand, that would really introduce some obstacles to being able to disciple and evangelize and gather for worship in a building like we're currently doing. Does submitting to government authorities mean we just, well, there's no explicit command, so we have to obey that? Or do we say, well, but there's these other commands that at some point, sort of, this command is interfering with. And therefore, obedience to God actually justifies not obeying that. Or another example, what about mask mandates? There's no verse that says you shall not wear a mask in worship. But masks obviously do affect our worship. They even interfere with it in some way. You know, it's harder to communicate with one another, to really get to know one another. Singing isn't the same. We can't greet one another with a holy kiss. So if the government doesn't take away that mandate, I mean, are we biblically constrained to have to go on wearing masks forever? Or do we have to make an argument for why wearing masks in worship would be sin so that we can justify not obeying. But the problem if you do that is, well, now it's sort of a double-edged sword, because do we really want to imply that someone who chooses to wear a mask is sinning? You see, you can start down a path of legalism. So those are some of the reasons why there are many Christians through history have argued, well, there are some other grounds, some other exceptions. So let's go on to the second one. So the first is very clear. If the government commands sin, we obey God rather than men. Well, second argument would be, or exception, is the idea that submit doesn't necessarily equal obey. And so folks will look at Romans 13 and 1 Peter 2 and see, well, the command there is to be subject to governing authorities. It doesn't say obey them. And so while being subject might normally entail obedience, There may be times when we could disobey while still demonstrating proper submission. So perhaps as a rough parallel, you could consider an adult child toward his parents. I should honor them. I should weigh heavily what they say. But I'm not ultimately obligated to obey them like a child would. Well, similarly, this is saying that we should always be subject to governing authorities. We should always be ready to defer to them, always have a posture of respect toward them, but we don't necessarily have to rigidly obey them. We only rigidly obey insofar as they're in step with God and his word, because ultimately our allegiance is to Christ. So, so that's another sort of view out there. Now, note that within this view, there would be some that would also add the idea that part of submitting to governing authorities is accepting whatever the consequences may be for disobedience. Okay, so the idea is, is not so much, you know, flee or fight, but sort of be the martyr. Yeah, if you want to take a stand and not submit because you feel like that's just sort of the general course of action that God would have you do, that's fine. But part of submission is accepting the punishment, the sword that the government may use on you. And by the way, I think an interesting example in relation to this would be the story of Daniel and the lion's den. The king there is tricked into signing an edict that forbid prayer for 30 days. And Daniel, of course, has this custom of praying three times a day with his window open toward Jerusalem. And then when the edict goes into effect, Daniel just keeps on praying with the window open exactly like he did before. Now, on one hand, clearly Daniel can't truly obey that edict without sinning, right? God commands prayer, no doubt. But as far as I know, God never commanded Daniel to pray on that particular schedule and with the window open. And so it seems like, well, Daniel could have just sort of altered his prayer habits a little bit, still sort of within the law of God. And at least that edict wouldn't have really been enforceable. And yet Daniel very clearly and openly defies the edict, right? Not just for the sake of some specific commandment, but as a testimony to the fact that his allegiance is to God. And that his whole life and his whole manner of devotion to God was going to be first and uncompromised. Right? So he's going to submit in every other way. He was so stringent in that, the people that wanted to get rid of him couldn't find anything else against him. But when it came to worship and devotion, he would rather die than adjust it at all. And then he seems to just accept the consequences. It doesn't seem like he's hiding, he's running, fighting. He just allows himself to be thrown into the den with lions. So clearly that's a very positive example of disobeying authority. And I think possibly, at least challenge us to consider whether that, you know, gives any support to this idea of demonstrating submission even without obedience. So, just something to keep in mind. Now, a third exception would be if the government is promoting evil. Okay? And at root, this is the idea that we aren't called to submit to tyranny. So in Romans 13 and 1 Peter 2, it says that the state rewards good and punishes evil. So the question is, well, what about when the state isn't doing that? What about when they're doing the reverse? and the state is actually promoting evil and punishing good or oppressing people under its care. This view would argue that there comes a point when, based on that, disobedience and even resistance is allowable or even demanded. Now, historically, we see a hint of this in John Calvin. So in the Institutes, He talks about the case of a tyrannical authority. And first he says, well, God's the one who judges. And he basically says, you should obey and suffer no matter what. Because that's the only command God's given. But then he says, he adds a clarification. He says,

I speak only of private men. Popular magistrates have been appointed to curb the tyranny of kings.

So you see the idea is that in the providence of God, while we as individuals should always submit and obey, there's lesser magistrates who have the opportunity, the ability, the obligation to stand up and curb the tyranny of kings. So that's where you start to get this idea of lesser magistrates. Well, that idea gets picked up and developed much more in something called the Magdeburg Confession. So this was composed by other Lutherans in 1550. So Augsburg is 1530. The Magdeburg Confession is in 1550. And as one scholar explains,

the doctrine of the lesser magistrate is a unique Christian theory of resistance to authority, which was first detailed in the Magdeburg Confession of 1550. This doctrine teaches that when a ruler has become an incorrigible tyrant within a very limited set of criteria, he has abdicated his claim to legitimacy. Consequently, those magistrates with lesser authority under him may defy and resist the illegitimate magistrate and his unjust laws for the sake of protecting others. For the embattled Protestant Reformation, the Magdeburg Confession became the embodiment of a theology of resistance, allowing not only for a right to resist in certain circumstances, but a duty.

Okay, so that's this idea of the lesser magistrates and when the government's promoting evil. And by the way, as we think about the present day significance of that, well, in America, who are the lesser magistrates? So we could think, yeah, senators, congressmen down. But I think a lot of people would go so far as to say, well, all of us to some degree. Because we live in a society where no longer are there peasants and commoners, but all of us have a vote. So this is where this gets picked up and applied in different ways. with the idea that all of us have this responsibility to defy and resist tyranny. By the way, I remember hearing about some police officers during the COVID pandemic who refused to enforce certain things because they thought it was unconstitutional. And so there's kind of an outworking of this idea of a lesser magistrate saying it's my duty to stand against a higher magistrate. Now, can we think of any examples of something like this in Scripture? Okay, how so? Okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So certainly, I mean, prophets come, I mean, And there's some distinction because they're sort of specifically given a word from God himself, but to denounce sinful practices of kings, good. one good thing he did when David told him to take a census, and that was bad for reasons I don't fully understand, but it would have been even worse to count the Levites, and Job was willing to go so far in obeying his orders, but David wanted him to count the Levites, and he wouldn't do that. Yeah, that's a good example. portion of Christ's earthly ministry in the face of the ruling local authorities with, you know, healing on the Sabbath and bringing the spirit of the law versus the love of the law. Good, yeah. Yep. Gabriel, Acts 5. Okay. The Pharisees are, you know, saying that we need to kill the apostles. You know, it basically tells them to pause, don't do this, like God's going to get justice on them if they are wrong. Okay, good, yeah, give me all of y'all. Yeah, I mean, he's sort of equal, he's on the council, so he's part of the authority, but yeah, he's taking a stand there. The other example I thought of was 1 Samuel 14, when Saul wants to kill Jonathan. And that's because Saul had made this rash oath, and then Jonathan didn't hear, because he was busy, like, winning the battle. And then Jonathan comes back and eats the honey, because he doesn't know about the oath. Well, then Saul finds out and wants to kill him. And at that point, the people step in, the other soldiers, they step in and say,

shall Jonathan die, who has worked this great salvation in Israel? Far from it. As the Lord lives, there shall not one hair of his head fall to the ground, for he has worked with God this day. So the people ransom Jonathan, and he did not die.

So they seem to rightly step in and say, Saul, no. So, the idea that there comes a point when there's tyranny, lesser authorities can step up against higher authority. Well then, a fourth exception would be if the government is outside its lane. Okay, so this is related to the one before, but here it's the idea that scripture doesn't just limit the government from promoting evil in general. But it also limits the kind of things the government can make laws about. And so this was more fully developed by Abraham Kuyper. So he was a Dutch theologian and then the prime minister in the early 1900s. And this has become known as the doctrine of sphere sovereignty. Okay, so this is the idea that scripture grants different institutions different spheres of authority. And therefore, each of those institutions' authority is limited by that sphere. So in contrast with statism, where the state has just sort of absolute unchecked authority over everything, or ecclesiasticism, where the church winds up sort of ruling through the power of the state, this is saying, no, there's separate spheres of authority. Namely, there's the self, the family, the church, and the state. And therefore, if we can look at scripture and figure out which things belong to which sphere, we'll know sort of who has authority over what. So, for example, if the state commands something outside its sphere of authority, like all children must be sent to public schools, but we conclude that the Bible puts the education of children in the sphere of the family, Well, then we don't have to obey that. At least we're not obligated for God to obey that. And it doesn't depend on me making an argument for why sending my kids to public school would be sinful, right? You see, there's a way you could argue that it would be sinful to do that and therefore say, well, it's violating the first or commanding sin. But on this view, you don't have to make that argument. Your argument is that the government is sinning by trying to require me to do something that God never gave them the authority to control. Right, they're outside their lane. Now, biblically, there's maybe better other examples. The one that kind of first came to mind would be Uzziah when he tries to go into the temple to offer incense. And these 80 priests come in, and they oppose him, and they say,

it's not for you, Uzziah, to burn incense to the Lord, but for the priests, go out of the sanctuary, for you have done wrong, and it will bring you no honor from the Lord.

Right, Uzziah, you're outside your lane. So again, there's, that's a different covenant, there's a lot of specifics we can look at, but it's this general idea that God has given a certain sphere of authority to the state. You also see this in a very recent declaration called the Frankfurt Declaration of Christian and Civil Liberties. A number of conservative Christian pastors have put that together recently. You know, names of people we know have signed it. And in that statement, it says,

we also affirm that governments should recognize that each individual is responsible for their own bodily well-being and should protect the right to personal medical self-determination. We thus reject all forms of medical coercion and any restrictions on individual freedoms for people who are not infected with any contagious life-threatening disease. This includes the implementation of vaccine passes, social distancing, or mask wearing as a general prerequisite for access to public places or for participation in work or social life.

" So you see what's going on. They're saying, look, that's in the sphere of the self. And the government is sort of irrigating an authority when they try to make a vaccine pass or something like that. Therefore, they're just outside their lane. It's not an argument about, you know, is it necessary? How bad is the disease? It's from sort of this idea of sphere sovereignty. So that's a fourth sort of exception we want to think more about in the coming weeks. And then the fifth would be if what they're commanding is against the Constitution. And of course this is related to the previous two, but this is the idea that whether or not we think the Bible itself limits the sphere of the governance authority, we live in a nation where the constitution and sort of design of our government does limit it. So if a police officer knocks on your door and demands to search your home without a warrant, you can say no. Right? I'm not, and by doing that, it's not that you're not submitting to governing authorities. You're just appealing to a higher authority. You're saying you, as an authority, are acting outside your lane for the kind of government that we have. Right? And we could think about, even in the first century, when Paul says,

let every soul be subject to the governing authorities.

Well, what happens if the governor is telling you to do something different than the emperor? What does submit look like? Well, generally, you're going to submit to the higher authority. And so on this argument, well, the higher authority would be the Constitution and the law that's been given for our nation. And so we can appeal to that. So those were the five main sort of exceptions that I've come across as I've wrestled with this. Again, today we're not delving into sort of trying to analyze and assess them. As I just briefly look at it, I think there's some legitimacy to all of these. At the same time, I think there's some potential pitfalls we need to watch out for with most of them. So, Lord willing, next week we're gonna take a closer look at Romans 13 and begin to evaluate some of these in light of that. But before we close today, I just want to point out one final thing that I didn't put on this list. And kind of through that, I think, give us some sort of final charge and maybe a unifying way to think about how this all fits together. And that's the fact that I didn't put on here anything about when the authority is infringing on our rights. Our rights are important, and a lot of these are going to sort of relate to that in some way. But the reason I point that out is to make clear that at the end of the day, I think all of these exceptions we're thinking about, we need to think about or recognize they all kind of fit under one controlling question, which is, what is God's will? On one hand, God commands us to submit to governing authorities. On the other hand, in a sinful, messy, broken world, there will necessarily come times when there's tension or conflict with other commands of God. So the goal here is to figure out sort of a more comprehensive framework to better discern what's God's will in complicated situations. But at the end of the day, it's not a question of our rights and privileges. Because we laid those all down when we took up our cross to follow Christ. At the end of the day, if we are Christians, then Christ is our king. And it's ultimately all about obedience to him. So if we obey governing authorities, it should be out of obedience to Christ. And if we disobey governing authorities, it should be out of obedience to Christ. And therefore, it's really, it shouldn't be fundamentally about us and how we protect our rights, our freedoms, our privileges, but it should be, the controlling desire of our hearts here should be a desire to obey and please the Lord in whatever it is that we do. And I think if we lose sight of that, we're likely to start to go astray. And we may wind up obeying when we shouldn't, or we may wind up disobeying when we shouldn't. But if we keep the desire to glorify and honor and please Christ in the center, I trust he will help us and give us great wisdom as we try to work through all of these possible exceptions. All right. Well, let's close in prayer. Father, we thank you for this time to talk about your word together. Lord, we thank you that you have instituted governing authorities for our good. And Lord, we thank you that your word is sufficient to give us guidance for the complicated and difficult situations when we may even need to disobey them. We pray that you give us wisdom to think through that well. We pray that at the end of the day, our greatest desire would be for the glory of Christ. And we pray this in his name. Amen.