Ver. 4.toVer. 8.
For just as in one body we have many limbs, but all the limbs have not the same function, so we, the many, are one body in Christ,in our personal union with Him,but in detail(τὸ δὲ καθεῖς),limbs of one another,coherent and related not as neighbours merely but as complementary parts in the whole.But having endowments(χαρίσματα)—according to the grace that was given to us—differing, be it prophecy,inspired utterance, a power from above, yet mysteriously conditioned (1 Cor. xiv. 32) by the judgment and will of the utterer,let it follow the proportion of theman'sfaith,let it be true to his entire dependence on the revealed Christ, not left at the mercy of his mere emotions, or as it were played upon by alien unseen powers;be it active service(διακονία), let the man bein his service,wholly given to it, not turning aside to covethis brother's more mystic gift;be it the teacher,let him likewise bein his teaching,whole-hearted in his allotted work, free from ambitious outlooks from it;be it the exhorter,let him bein his exhortation; the distributerof his means, for God,with open-handedness; the superintendent,of Church, or of home,with earnestness; the pitier,(large and unofficial designation!)with gladness,doubling his gifts and works of mercy by the hallowed brightness of a heart set free from the aims of self, and therefore wholly at the service of the needing.
This paragraph of eight verses lies here before us, full all along of that deep characteristic of Gospel life, surrender for service. The call is to a profoundly passive inward attitude, with an express view to a richly active outward usefulness. Possessed, and knowing it, of the compassions of God, the man is asked to give himself over to Eternal Love for purposes of unworldly and unambitious employment in the path chosen for him, whatever it may be. In this respect above all others he is to be "not conformed to this world"—that is, he is to make not himself but his Lord his pleasure and ambition. "By the renewal of his mind" he is to view the Will of God from a point inaccessible to the unregenerate, to the unjustified, to the man not emancipated in Christ from the tyranny of sin. He is to see in it his inexhaustible interest, his line of quest and hope, his ultimate and satisfying aim; because of the practical identity of the Will and the infinitely good and blessed Bearer of it. And this more than surrender of his faculties, this happy and reposeful consecration of them, is to shew its reality in one way above all others first; in a humble estimate of self as compared with brother Christians, and a watchfulwillingness to do—not another's work, but the duty that lies next.
This relative aspect of the life of self-surrender is the burthen of this great paragraph of duty. In the following passage we shall find precepts more in detail; but here we have what is to govern all along the whole stream of the obedient life. The man rich in Christ is reverently to remember others, and God's will in them, and for them. He is to avoid the subtle temptation to intrude beyond the Master's allotted workfor him. He is to be slow to think, "I am richly qualified, and could do this thing, and that, and the other, better than the man who does it now." His chastened spiritual instinct will rather go to criticize himself, to watch for the least deficiency in his own doing of the task which at least to-day is his. He will "give himself wholly to this," be it more or less attractive to him in itself. For he works as one who has not to contrive a life as full of success and influence as he can imagine, but to accept a life assigned by the Lord who has first given to him Himself.
The passage itself amply implies that he is to use actively and honestly his renewedintelligence. He is to look circumstances and conditions in the face, remembering that in one way or another the will of God is expressed in them. He is to seek to understand not his duties only but his personal equipments for them, natural as well as spiritual. But he is to do this as one whose "mind" is "renewed" by his living contact and union with his redeeming King, and who has really laid his faculties at the feet of an absolute Master, who is the Lord of order as well as of power.
What peace, energy, and dignity comes into a lifewhich is consciously and deliberately thus surrendered! The highest range of duties, as man counts highest, is thus disburthened both of its heavy anxieties and of its temptations to a ruinous self-importance. And the lowest range, as man counts lowest, is filled with the quiet greatness born of the presence and will of God. In the memoirs of Mme de la Mothe Guyon much is said of her faithful maid-servant, who was imprisoned along with her (in a separate chamber) in the Bastille, and there died, about the year 1700. This pious woman, deeply taught in the things of the Spirit, and gifted with an understanding far above the common, appears never for an hour to have coveted a more ambitious department than that which God assigned her in His obedience. "She desired to be what God would have her be, and to be nothing more, and nothing less. She included time and place, as well as disposition and action. She had not a doubt that God, who had given remarkable powers to Mme Guyon, had called her to the great work in which she was employed. But knowing that her beloved mistress could not go alone, but must constantly have some female attendant, she had the conviction, equally distinct, that she was called to be her maid-servant."[210]
A great part of the surface of Christian society would be "transfigured" if its depth was more fully penetrated with that spirit. And it is to that spirit that the Apostle here definitely calls us, each and every one, not as with a "counsel of perfection" for the few, but as the will of God for all who have found out what is meant by His "compassions," and have caught even aglimpse of His Will as "good, and acceptable, and perfect."
"I would not have the restless willThat hurries to and fro,Seeking for some great thing to doOr secret thing to know;I would be treated as a child,And guided where I go."
"I would not have the restless willThat hurries to and fro,Seeking for some great thing to doOr secret thing to know;I would be treated as a child,And guided where I go."
"I would not have the restless will
That hurries to and fro,
Seeking for some great thing to do
Or secret thing to know;
I would be treated as a child,
And guided where I go."
[207]The Greek imperative is present, and indicates a process.[208]See Trench,N. T. Synonyms,s.v.μορφή, for the pregnant difference of the two nouns which are the distinctive elements here of the two verbs.[209]See 1 Cor. xii. 21: "Can the head sayto the feet, etc.?"[210]Upham:Life, etc., of Mme de la M. Guyon, ch. I.
[207]The Greek imperative is present, and indicates a process.
[208]See Trench,N. T. Synonyms,s.v.μορφή, for the pregnant difference of the two nouns which are the distinctive elements here of the two verbs.
[209]See 1 Cor. xii. 21: "Can the head sayto the feet, etc.?"
[210]Upham:Life, etc., of Mme de la M. Guyon, ch. I.
CHRISTIAN DUTY: DETAILS OF PERSONAL CONDUCT
Romansxii. 9-21
ST PAUL has set before us the life of surrender, of the "giving-over" of faculty to God, in one great preliminary aspect. The fair ideal (meant always for a watchful and hopeful realization) has been held aloft. It is a life whose motive is the Lord's "compassions"; whose law of freedom is His will; whose inmost aim is, without envy or interference towards our fellow-servants, to "finish the work He hath givenusto do." Now into this noble outline are to be poured the details of personal conduct which, in any and every line and field, are to make the characteristics of the Christian.
As we listen again, we will again remember that the words are levelled not at a few but at all who are in Christ. The beings indicated here are not the chosen names of a Church Calendar, nor are they the passionless inhabitants of a Utopia. They are all who, in Rome of old, in England now, "have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ," "have the Spirit of God dwelling in them," and are living out this wonderful but most practical life in the straight line of their Father's will.
As if he could not heap the golden words too thickly together, St Paul dictates here with even unusualabruptness and terseness of expression. He leaves syntax very much alone; gives us noun and adjective, and lets them speak for themselves. We will venture to render as nearly verbatim as possible. The English will inevitably seem more rough and crude than the Greek, but the impression given will be truer on the whole to the original than a fuller rendering would be.
Ver. 9.toVer. 14.
Your(ἡ)love, unaffected. Abominating the ill, wedded to[211]the good. For your brotherly-kindness, full of mutual home-affection(φιλόστοργοι).For your honour,your code of precedence,deferring to one another. For your earnestness,[212]not slothful. For the Spirit,as regards your possession and use of the divine Indweller,glowing.[213]For the Lord, bond-serving.[214]For your hope,that is to say, as to the hope of the Lord's Return,rejoicing. For your affliction, enduring. For your prayer, persevering. For the wants of the saints,for the poverty of fellow-Christians,communicating;"sharing" (κοινωνοῦντες), a yet nobler thing than the mere "giving" which may ignore the sacred fellowship of the provider and the receiver.Hospitality[215]—prosecuting(διώκοντες) as with a studiouscultivation.Bless those who persecute[216]you; bless, and do not curse.This was a solemnly appropriate precept, for the community over which, eight years later, the first great Persecution was to break in "blood, and fire, and vapour of smoke." And no doubt there was abundant present occasion for it, even while the scene was comparatively tranquil. Every modern mission-field can illustrate the possibilities of a "persecution" which may be altogether private, or which at most may touch only a narrow neighbourhood; which may never reach the point of technical outrage, yet may apply a truly "fiery trial" to the faithful convert. Even in circles of our decorous English society is no such thing known as the "persecution" of a life "not conformed to this world," though the assault or torture may take forms almost invisible and impalpable, except to the sensibilities of the object of it? For all such cases, as well as for the confessor on the rack, and the martyr in the fire, this precept holds expressly; "Bless, do not curse." In Christ find possible the impossible; let the resentment of nature die, at His feet, in the breath of His love.
Ver. 15.
To rejoice with the rejoicing, and to weep with the weeping;holy duties of the surrendered life, too easily forgotten. Alas, there is such a phenomenon, not altogether rare, as a life whose self-surrender, in some main aspects, cannot be doubted, but which utterly fails in sympathy. A certain spiritual exaltation is allowed actually to harden, or at least to seem toharden, the consecrated heart; and the man who perhaps witnesses for God with a prophet's ardour is yet not one to whom the mourner would go for tears and prayer in his bereavement, or the child for a perfectly human smile in its play. But this is not as the Lord would have it be. If indeed the Christian has "given his body over," it is that his eyes, and lips, and hands, may be ready to give loving tokens of fellowship in sorrow, and (what is less obvious) in gladness too, to the human hearts around him.
Ver. 16.
Feeling[217]the same thing towards one another;animated by a happy identity of sympathy and brotherhood.Not haughty in feeling,[218]but full of lowly sympathies[219];accessible, in an unaffected fellowship, to the poor, the social inferior, the weak and the defeated, and again to the smallest and homeliest interests of all. It was the Lord's example; the little child, the wistful parent, the widow with her mites, the poor fallen woman of the street, could "lead away" (συναπάγειν) His blessed sympathies with a touch, while He responded with an unbroken majesty of gracious power, but with a kindness for which condescension seems a word far too cold and distant.
Do not get to be wise in your own opinion;be ready always to learn; dread the attitude of mind, too possible even for the man of earnest spiritual purpose, whichassumes that you have nothing to learn and everything to teach; which makes it easy to criticize and to discredit; and which can prove an altogether repellent thing to the observer from outside, who is trying to estimate the Gospel by its adherent and advocate.|Ver. 17.|Requiting no one evil for evil;safe from the spirit of retaliation, in your surrender to Him "who when He was reviled, reviled not again; when He suffered, threatened not."Taking forethought for good in the sight of all men;not letting habits, talk, expenses, drift into inconsistency; watching with open and considerate eyes against what others may fairly think to be unchristian in you. Here is no counsel of cowardice, no recommendation of slavery to a public opinion which may be altogether wrong. It is a precept of loyal jealousy for the heavenly Master's honour. His servant is to be nobly indifferent to the world's thought and word where he is sure that God and the world antagonize. But he is to be sensitively attentive to the world's observation where the world, more or less acquainted with the Christian precept or principle, and more or less conscious of its truth and right, is watching, maliciously or it may be wistfully, to see if it governs the Christian's practice. In view of this the man will never be content even with the satisfaction of his own conscience; he will set himself not only to do right, but to be seen to do it. He will not only be true to a monetary trust, for example; he will take care that the proofs of his fidelity shall be open. He will not only mean well towards others; he will take care that his manner and bearing, his dealings and intercourse, shall unmistakably breathe the Christian air.
Ver. 18.
If possible, as regards your side,(the "your" is as emphatic as possible in position andin meaning,)living at peace with all men;yes, even in pagan and hostile Rome. A peculiarly Christian principle speaks here. The men who had "given over their bodies a living sacrifice" might think, imaginably, that their duty was to court the world's enmity, to tilt as it were against its spears, as if the one supreme call was to collide, to fall, and to be glorified. But this would be fanaticism; and the Gospel is never fanatical, for it is the law of love. The surrendered Christian is not, as such, an aspirant for even a martyr's fame, but the servant of God and man. If martyrdom crosses his path, it is met as duty; but he does not court it aséclat. And what is true of martyrdom is of course true of every lower and milder form of the conflict of the Church, and of the Christian, in the world.
Nothing more nobly evidences the divine origin of the Gospel than this essential precept; "as far as it lies withyou, live peaceably with all men." Such wise and kind forbearance and neighbourliness would never have been bound up with the belief of supernatural powers and hopes, if those powers and hopes had been the mere issue of human exaltation, of natural enthusiasm. The supernatural of the Gospel leads to nothing but rectitude and considerateness, in short to nothing but love, between man and man. And why? Because it is indeed divine; it is the message and gift of the living Son of God, in all the truth and majesty of His rightfulness. All too early in the history of the Church "the crown of martyrdom" became an object of enthusiastic ambition. But that was not because of the teaching of the Crucified, nor of His suffering Apostles.|Ver. 19.toVer. 21.|Not avenging yourselves, beloved; no, give place to the wrath;let the angry opponent, the dreadpersecutor, have his way, so far as your resistance or retaliation is concerned. "Beloved, let us love" (1 John iv. 7); with that strong and conquering love which wins by suffering. And do not fear lest eternal justice should go by default; there is One who will take care of that matter; you may leave it with Him.For it stands written(Deut. xxxii. 35),"To Me belongs vengeance; I will recompense, saith the Lord." "But if"[220](and again he quotes the older Scriptures, finding in the Proverbs (xxv. 21, 22) the same oracular authority as in the Pentateuch),"but if thy enemy is hungry, give him food; if he is thirsty, give him drink; for so doing thou wilt heap coals of fire on his head";taking the best way to the only "vengeance" which a saint can wish, namely, your "enemy's" conviction of his wrong, the rising of a burning shame in his soul, and the melting of his spirit in the fire of love.Be not thou conquered by the evil, but conquer, in the good, the evil.
"Inthe good"; as if surrounded by it,[221]moving invulnerable, in its magic circle, through "the contradiction of sinners," "the provoking of all men." The thought is just that of Psal. xxxi. 18, 19: "How great is Thy goodness, which Thou hast laid up for them that fear Thee, which Thou hast wrought for them that trust in Thee before the sons of men! Thou shalt hide them in the secret of Thy presence from the pride of man; Thou shalt keep them secretly in a pavilion fromthe strife of tongues." "The good" of this sentence of St Paul's is no vague and abstract thing; it is "the gift of God" (vi. 28); it is the life eternal found and possessed in union with Christ, our Righteousness, our Sanctification, our Redemption. Practically,[222]it is "not It butHe." The Roman convert who should find it more than possible to meet his enemy with love, to do him positive good in his need, with a conquering simplicity of intention, was to do so not so much by an internal conflict between his "better self" and his worse, as by the living power of Christ received in his whole being; by "abiding in Him."
It is so now, and for ever. The open secret of divine peace and love is what it was; as necessary, as versatile, as victorious. And its path of victory is as straight and as sure as of old. And the precept to tread that path, daily and hourly, if occasion calls, is still as divinely binding as it ever was for the Christian, if indeed he has embraced "the mercies of God," and is looking to his Lord to be evermore "transfigured, by the renewing of his mind."
As we review this rich field of the flowers, and of the gold, of holiness, this now completed paragraph of epigrammatic precepts, some leading and pervading principles emerge. We see first that the sanctity of the Gospel is no hushed and cloistered "indifferentism." It is a thing intended for the open field of human life; to be lived out "before the sons of men." A strong positive element is in it. The saint is to "abominatethe evil"; not only to deprecate it, and deplore. Heis to be energetically "in earnest." He is to "glow" with the Spirit, and to "rejoice" in the hope of glory. He is to take practical, provident pains to live not only aright, but manifestly aright, in ways which "all men" can recognize. Again, his life is to be essentially social. He is contemplated as one who meets other lives at every turn, and he is never to forget or neglect his relation to them. Particularly in the Christian Society, he is to cherish the "family affection" of the Gospel; to defer to fellow Christians in a generous humility; to share his means with the poor among them; to welcome the strangers of them to his house. He is to think it a sacred duty to enter into the joys and the sorrows round him. He is to keep his sympathies open for despised people, and for little matters. Then again, and most prominently after all, he is to be ready to suffer, and to meet suffering with a spirit far greater than that of only resignation. He is to bless his persecutor; he is to serve his enemy in ways most practical and active; he is to conquer him for Christ, in the power of a divine communion.
Thus, meanwhile, the life, so positive, so active in its effects, is to be essentially all the while a passive, bearing, enduring, life. Its strength is to spring not from the energies of nature, which may or may not be vigorous in the man, but from an internal surrender to the claim and government of his Lord. He has "presented himself to God" (vi. 13); he has "presented his body, a living sacrifice" (xii. 1). He has recognized, with a penitent wonder and joy, that he is but the limb of a Body, and that his Head is the Lord. His thought is now not for his personal rights, his individual exaltation, but for the glory of his Head, for the fulfilment of the thought of his Head, and for the health and wealthof the Body, as the great vehicle in the world of the gracious will of the Head.
It is among the chief and deepest of the characteristics of Christian ethics, this passive root below a rich growth and harvest of activity. All through the New Testament we find it expressed or suggested. The first Beatitude uttered by the Lord (Matt. v. 3) is given to "the poor, the mendicant (πτωχοί), in spirit." The last (John xx. 29) is for the believer, who trusts without seeing. The radiant portrait of holy Love (1 Cor. xiii.) produces its effect, full of indescribable life as well as beauty, by the combination of almost none but negative touches; the "total abstinence" of the loving soul from impatience, from envy, from self-display, from self-seeking, from brooding over wrong, from even the faintest pleasure in evil, from the tendency to think ill of others. Everywhere the Gospel bids the Christian take sides against himself. He is to stand ready to forego even his surest rights, if onlyheis hurt by so doing; while on the other hand he is watchful to respect even the least obvious rights of others, yea, to consider their weaknesses, and their prejudices, to the furthest just limit. He is "not to resist evil"; in the sense of never fighting for self as self. He is rather to "suffer himself to be defrauded" (1 Cor. vi. 7) than to bring discredit on his Lord in however due a course of law. The straits and humiliations of his earthly lot, if such things are the will of God for him, are not to be materials for his discontent, or occasions for his envy, or for his secular ambition. They are to be his opportunities for inward triumph; the theme of a "song of the Lord," in which he is to sing of strength perfected in weakness, of a power not his own "overshadowing" him (2 Cor. xii. 9, 10).
Such is the passivity of the saints, deep beneaththeir serviceable activity. The two are in vital connexion. The root is not the accident but the proper antecedent of the product. For the secret and unostentatious surrender of the will, in its Christian sense, is no mere evacuation, leaving the house swept but empty; it is the reception of the Lord of life into the open castle of the City of Mansoul. It is the placing in His hands of all that the walls contain. And placed in His hands, the castle, and the city, will shew at once, and continually more and more, that not only order but life has taken possession. The surrender of the Moslem is, in its theory,a meresubmission. The surrender of the Gospel is a reception also; and thus its nature is to come out in "the fruit of the Spirit."
Once more, let us not forget that the Apostle lays his main emphasis here rather on being than on doing. Nothing is said of great spiritual enterprises; everything has to do with the personal conduct of the men who, if such enterprises are done, must do them. This too is characteristic of the New Testament. Very rarely do the Apostles say anything about their converts' duty, for instance, to carry the message of Christ around them in evangelistic aggression. Such aggression was assuredly attempted, and in numberless ways, by the primeval Christians, from those who were "scattered abroad" (Acts viii. 4) after the death of Stephen onwards. The Philippians (ii. 15, 16) "shone as lights in the world, holding out the word of life." The Ephesians (v. 13) penetrated the surrounding darkness, being themselves "light in the Lord." The Thessalonians (1, i. 8) made their witness felt "in Macedonia, and Achaia, and in every place." The Romans, encouraged by St Paul's presence and sufferings, "were bold to speak the word without fear" (Phil. i. 14).St John (3 Ep. 7) alludes to missionaries who, "for the Name's sake, went forth, taking nothing of the Gentiles."
Yet is it not plain that, when the Apostles thought of the life and zeal of their converts, their first care, by far, was that they should be wholly conformed to the will of God in personal and social matters? This was the indispensable condition to their being, as a community, what they must be if they were to prove true witnesses and propagandists for their Lord.
God forbid that we should draw from this phenomenon one inference, however faint, to thwart or discredit the missionary zeal now in our day rising like a fresh, pure tide in the believing Church. May our Master continually animate His servants in the Church at home to seek the lost around them, to recall the lapsed with the voice of truth and love. May He multiply a hundredfold the scattered host of His "witnesses in the uttermost parts of the earth," through the dwelling-places of those eight hundred millions who are still pagan, not to speak of the lesser yet vast multitudes of misbelievers, Mahometan and Jewish. But neither in missionary enterprise, nor in any sort of activity for God and man, is this deep suggestion of the Epistles to be forgotten. What the Christian does is even more important than what he says. What he is is the all-important antecedent to what he does. He is "nothing yet as he ought to" be if, amidst even innumerable efforts and aggressions, he has not "presented his body a living sacrifice" for his Lord's purposes, not his own; if he has not learnt, in his Lord, an unaffected love, a holy family affection, a sympathy with griefs and joys around him, a humble esteem of himself, and the blessed art of giving way to wrath, and of overcoming evil in "the good" of the presence of the Lord.
[211]See the context of 1 Cor. vi. 17 for an apology for this paraphrase ofκολλώμενοι.[212]"In business" gives perhaps too special a direction to the thought, as we use the word "business" now. Not that that special direction would not have a noble truth in it, rightly understood.[213]Literally "boiling," as a caldron on the fire.[214]This reading,τῷ κυρίῳ, as againstτῷ καιρῷ, appears to be certainly right.—Our rendering is bold; for undoubtedly "serving the Lord" meets the Greek grammar more simply. But the datives are hitherto so clearly datives of relation that we think this also must be so explained. We can only apologize for the crude compound "bond-serving" by the wish to represent the full force ofδουλεύοντες.[215]Τὴν φιλοξενίαν: we may paraphrase the article by "yourhospitality," or even "Christianhospitality." But this would exaggerate the impression it represented.[216]Διώκοντας: it seems certain that this word was suggested by theδιώκοντεςjust before, widely different as the references are. But how shall English convey this echo?[217]Φρονοῦντεσ: the word "thinking" does not quite rightly represent the Greek.Φρονεῖνis not "to think," in the sense of articulate reflection, but to have a mental and moral disposition, of whatever kind. A popular use of the word "to feel" fairly represents this.[218]Lit., "not 'minding,' affecting, high things." We paraphrase, to retain the word "feeling" forφρονεῖν.[219]Lit., "being led away with the humble (things)." Some paraphrase is necessary here.[220]Read,ἀλλ' ἐὰν.[221]We are aware that not seldom in the N. T.ἐνrepresents the Hebrewב(ofבכלם) in its familiar instrumental meaning, without any definite trace oflocalimagery. But where the more literal rendering has an obvious fitness it is best to retain it. Thus we renderἐνhere by "by" not "in."[222]Though theτῳ ἀγαθῳof the Greek is certainly neuter, by its balance withτὸ κακόν.
[211]See the context of 1 Cor. vi. 17 for an apology for this paraphrase ofκολλώμενοι.
[212]"In business" gives perhaps too special a direction to the thought, as we use the word "business" now. Not that that special direction would not have a noble truth in it, rightly understood.
[213]Literally "boiling," as a caldron on the fire.
[214]This reading,τῷ κυρίῳ, as againstτῷ καιρῷ, appears to be certainly right.—Our rendering is bold; for undoubtedly "serving the Lord" meets the Greek grammar more simply. But the datives are hitherto so clearly datives of relation that we think this also must be so explained. We can only apologize for the crude compound "bond-serving" by the wish to represent the full force ofδουλεύοντες.
[215]Τὴν φιλοξενίαν: we may paraphrase the article by "yourhospitality," or even "Christianhospitality." But this would exaggerate the impression it represented.
[216]Διώκοντας: it seems certain that this word was suggested by theδιώκοντεςjust before, widely different as the references are. But how shall English convey this echo?
[217]Φρονοῦντεσ: the word "thinking" does not quite rightly represent the Greek.Φρονεῖνis not "to think," in the sense of articulate reflection, but to have a mental and moral disposition, of whatever kind. A popular use of the word "to feel" fairly represents this.
[218]Lit., "not 'minding,' affecting, high things." We paraphrase, to retain the word "feeling" forφρονεῖν.
[219]Lit., "being led away with the humble (things)." Some paraphrase is necessary here.
[220]Read,ἀλλ' ἐὰν.
[221]We are aware that not seldom in the N. T.ἐνrepresents the Hebrewב(ofבכלם) in its familiar instrumental meaning, without any definite trace oflocalimagery. But where the more literal rendering has an obvious fitness it is best to retain it. Thus we renderἐνhere by "by" not "in."
[222]Though theτῳ ἀγαθῳof the Greek is certainly neuter, by its balance withτὸ κακόν.
CHRISTIAN DUTY; IN CIVIL LIFE AND OTHERWISE: LOVE
Romansxiii. 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 faithfulsubject 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 bytheir 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 thata 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 authorityjustlybelongs.... Submission in all things lawful to 'theexisting 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 bondof conscienceon 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 isno powerbut 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.