(This is the first of a series on Romans 13. The Covid regime has pushed Romans 13 to the front of conversation between Christians. I am working on putting out several articles on the issues that surround Romans 13 to shed more light on the big picture of what God is doing through his instruction in Romans 13.)
Many of the regulations our government put forward during the Covid-19 crisis undermine the fundamental duty of Christians to love one another. While keeping peace with all men, Christians should continue exercising this divine instruction as much as possible. In this sense, I agree with the many memes that say, “to resist tyranny is to obey God.”
Our duty to demonstrate an embodied love is a higher duty than that of honoring the civil magistrate. In fact, honoring and submitting to the civil magistrate is, in Romans 13, subsequent to the call to promote peace. Such an attitude allows the church to do the necessary work of proclaiming the gospel among men. The nature of the civil magistrate is such that it is good for the church to submit to them, for God has established them to bear the sword of vengeance. But the embodied love of the saints for one another remains a higher calling.
The word “embodied” is essential here. “Glorify God in your body,” God says to the Corinthians in the context of warning them about sexual immorality. The way we use our bodies is vital to God. If it is crucial, then the church’s authority as an expression of the power of Christ is an authority that affects the body as well.
I seek to prove this in two parts. First, I will demonstrate that the love of the brotherhood is the highest calling after the love of God. After that, I will seek to illustrate the importance of that love being embodied instead of projected through letters, phones, or screens.
Before I get to Romans 12 and 13, I will bring in several passages that more clearly point to the priority of the love of the brotherhood. (I assume, of course, that the most important love is the love of God. Brotherly love flows from the love of God and demonstrates that love.)
The most striking passage in this regard is John 13. There Jesus, having washed his disciples’ feet and having expressed his love toward his disciples through the love feast of the Lord’s Supper, says this: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.” The unique expression of Jesus’ love defines the Christian brotherhood’s love for one another. There is a constant willingness to give oneself for one another, just as Christ gave himself for us on the cross, just as Jesus expressed his love by washing the disciples’ feet.
Christ gives this command to the brotherhood, the Christian church. Jesus is speaking to his disciples, giving them instructions on what it is to be the new Israel. Significantly, this is the central commandment he gives his disciples before going to the cross. This command marks out the church as an alternative community, an alternative community that is defined by the self-giving of Christ.
Another place where we see the priority of brotherly love is in 1 Peter 2: 17, “Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the Emperor.” Notice the gradations of command. “Fear God.” Obviously, God is first. God is the only one we ought to tremble before truly. God is the only one whose opinion matters in the end. “Love the Brotherhood.” We owe the brotherhood the sacrificial love of Jesus Christ. “Honor everyone… Honor the Emperor.” These deserve honor because of God’s image and their office. The commands of Peter demonstrate priority, however. We owe God, the brotherhood, and then we have duties to others in society.
The teaching of Paul in 1 Corinthians reflects this on a practical level. In the opening chapters, Paul calls on the Corinthians to prioritize Christ over their attachment to various Christian leaders, but even more the world’s wisdom. Then, in 1 Corinthians 5-10, Paul warns Christians about attachments to the world, especially regarding the temptations of sexual immorality and idolatry.
One passage that particularly stands out for our purposes is in the first part of chapter six, where Paul warns about settling civil matters before the ungodly civil magistrate (in other places, Paul clearly sees the benefit of the civil magistrate for criminal matters). A deduction from this passage might be that the church ought to oversee her own civil affairs as much as possible, especially when the civil magistrate is ungodly.
The remainder of 1st Corinthians defines the love of the community, especially as it pertains to the practices of worship and the use of each person’s gifts for the sake of the community. Again, we see the priority of the love of the community of Christ.
Now we come to Romans. Romans 13 is sandwiched between calls to love the brotherhood. Romans 12 begins with personal transformation, but that personal transformation turns into the service of love toward the community of God, calling each member to use the gifts of grace given to them for the sake of the community. It all culminates in the words of verses 9 and 10, “Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor.”
Similarly, after the teaching on civil government in Romans 13: 8, Paul goes back to the love we owe one another, “owe no one anything except to love one another.” The teaching on the civil magistrate is sandwiched in the primary commandment of Christ, “just as I have loved you, so you also are to love one another.”
We can make our case even stronger in Paul’s theology of the church in Ephesians, Colossians, and Philippians. All emphasize our priority in connecting to our head as the body of Christ. In Ephesians, we are told that we are “raised up with him and seated with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” In Colossians, “you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God,” and “you died to the elemental spirits (a reference to the social order) of this world.” Finally, in Philippians, “But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.”
We are citizens of heaven who do not truly belong to this earth. The order of our affairs is distinct. According to that reality we have the calling that is only second to our fear of God to love one another.
And in this love of one another, we have Christ as our example, which brings us to our second part, where I seek to demonstrate the importance of embodied love.
The very act of Christ in washing the feet of his disciples as a demonstration of his love shows the importance of bodily presence in our love of one another. Christ shows his love in a very personal and human way. The fact that Christ has sent his Spirit upon us allows us to call the kindness we do to one another in visiting and sharing good works that we have done to him. We see this in the teaching on the sheep and the goats before the judgment seat of Christ in Matthew 25. “What you have done to the least of these, you have done to me.”
There is also what we noted in our introduction, the call to glorify God with one’s body, which affects most prominently sexuality, but we can also note, again in 1st Corinthians, how the use of one’s body brings glory or shame to the church of Jesus Christ. Particularly, we can think of the Lord’s supper, where the way the Corinthians have organized themselves is so offensive to God that God tells the Corinthians that it is not the Lord’s Supper they are eating. The way they use their bodies demonstrates their service of God.
Neither can the body be replaced by letters or other forms of distance communication. Most prominent in this is the example of Jesus Christ, who demonstrated himself through a love that could touch, that could become sick, that could be maimed. God did present himself to his people in the Old Testament at a distance, necessarily behind a veil and through mediaries. However, in his most significant act of love, God becomes flesh so that he can be physically present with his people. Christ has the fullness of the glory of God within him. If we are to imitate Christ’s love, our love should also be physical.
The Christian has the Spirit of Christ. He is a temple, like Christ. That is why corporate worship is so important; we come to see Christ in one another. The church has always taught, based on a chapter like Hebrews 12, that Christ is present in a unique way in the corporate worship of the church. Long-distance communication, whether letters or live streams, cannot take the place of this corporate worship. In the same way, private Bible Study cannot replace membership in the body. We need the body.
Of course, we must take circumstance and necessity into account. I cannot be present with my father and mother at this time, so I use other means. But in the community where God put me, where I am fully able and willing to go, I ought to be a part of the communion of saints. Sickness can take us away from the body, weather, coercion, and persecutions, and God gives us strength in these times. Nothing can keep us from his love, even if our bodies are somehow unable to make it to the communion of the saints. However, if possible, I ought to search out the body and join it regularly for my spiritual health. The arm does no good to the heart if it is not physically present.
I ought to make a caveat here that some regulation is helpful in a pandemic. There are regulations I would be happy to follow. There are excellent resources demonstrating a different and wiser path our government may have taken, which considers the flourishing of all parts of society and respects the historical rights of individuals and institutions. One example is the Great Barrington Declaration. But, since the government chose the road of tyranny (as best I understand it), we must figure out how to self-regulate according to the best sources we have on Covid, which isn’t always ideal. Yet even then, we still ought to prioritize the communion of the saints as much as possible.
Therefore, if I owe love to the brotherhood more than I owe submission to the government, and if I that love I owe ought to be embodied, then when governments undermine my love for the brotherhood through mandates, I still ought to fulfill what I owe to my brothers as much as possible. This love can be shown in visiting brothers when we are not allowed to visit. This love can be in showing equal kindness to vaccinated and unvaccinated. This love can be my presence in church for the joy of assembling before the Lord. Because of the importance of the love of the brotherhood, the possibility of fines, mockery, and jail time (all of which have proved relatively low risk if you choose to be non-confrontational and respectful), should be a small price to pay for reflecting Christ in our love toward one another.
In conclusion, the church should count her duties to one another as more important than her duties to the government. There is, however, a big “however” here. Paul notes the importance that as much as possible we ought to have peace with all men. Even where we must obey God before men, we are do so out of a desire for the good of our country, even out of love for our enemies. There is the critical question of prudence in these things. I hope that in our next blog post, we can deal with this question. We also not that we do not dismiss the government entirely even when it acts in a tyrannical fashion. Paul also notes that, properly speaking, the civil magistrate does have a vital role to play which we are called to recognize, submit to, and obey. We owe the civil magistrate for certain services, but that cannot take away from what we owe one another.