He was born in Africa to a Christian mother and a pagan father, who passed away shortly before he went to college. His mother had however managed to scrape together the money to send him to college, after which he’d end up in Europe.
She’d raised him to go to church and read the Bible, and prayed for him daily while he was away.
But it seemed to make no difference. He grew into an intelligent but arrogant young man, convinced that logic alone could lead to truth and so had no place for the Bible.
Though he sometimes attended sermons, he focused more on learning public speaking skills than the message itself.
He generally tried to live a respectable life, but he really did struggle with sexual desires. He already, at the age of sixteen, had fathered a child, and had a string of girlfriends.
Being a reasonable person, this is not what he wanted for himself and it frustrated him the kind of person he was becoming.
Until one day, as he wrote in his diary, while in a garden, deeply broken by his failures, he heard what seemed like the voice of a child singing a nursery rhyme: “tolle lege, tolle lege,” the latin for pick up and read.
Could it be, he wondered, that the God of his childhood was telling him to pick up a Bible and read?
So he found a Bible, and opened it, pretty much at random, and the page that came up, the very first words he read, are the last two sentences of the Romans 13.
He wrote that he didn’t need to read another word because straight away, “it was as if the light of faith flooded into the heart”
Anyone know who he is?
Augustine, more famously known as Saint Augustine of Hippo.
He lived in the 4th century and went on to become one of history’s greatest thinkers. He has had a great influence on philosophy and the church. It is said that the difference between Catholics and Protestants is that Catholics hold on to Augustine’s teaching on the church, while protestants hold on to his teaching on salvation. Both are Augustinian.
And so the words we are looking at this morning are powerful words that have changed lives, transformed history—and they show us how the gospel speaks to our life choices.
Last week we heard that the gospel is transformative. We are not conform to our world, but to live radically transformed lives.
That theme continues today, as Paul addresses three areas of our lives in which to show that transformed Christian life, and he uses very personal illustrations for each of them: belastingdienst, banksaldo and kledingkast.
Let’s start with belastingdienst:
- Duty to God’s deacon (v.1-7)
And the summary of this section is v.5
Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also as a matter of conscience.
The key instruction here is the word submit, which is not a word we like very much, but is a very important biblical command.
Besides governing authorities, Christians are to submit to their spiritual leaders (1 Cor 16:16), Christians are submit to one another (Eph. 5:21), slaves are to submit to their masters —or in contemporary language, employees to submit to their boss (Tit. 2:9) prophets, whatever those are—I think they are just preachers, to submit to other prophets (1 Cor. 14:32), and wives to submit to their husbands (Eph.5:24).
And if you sum up all these contexts in which submission is required, submission cannot mean strict and universal obedience.
It is noteworthy that Paul does not use the word, obey, which is the word used for the responsibility of children—children obey your parents.
But we are to submit to government, which means an attitude that recognizes the authority of government in how God has ordered the world.
So in v.1, we are to submit because government is established by God;
and v.2, to be rebel against gvt is to rebel against God.
In v.4, twice we are told that gvt is God’s servant, and the word is deacon. Ever thought of gvt as a deacon?
But the sense is that because gvts have been established by God, they are serving God’s purpose whether they know and recognize it or not.
And God’s purpose of gvt, v.4 again, is public order by the administration of justice—rewarding good and punishing evil.
And so we are to submit to them, not only because of possible punishment—a fine when you drive above the speed limit, prison, etc
but we are to submit also as a matter of conscience—they have been established by God. We have a moral duty to submit to them.
Now, while the passage is fairly clear, there have been many legitimate questions that have been raised on this topic:
what about if we have an evil gvt? What if the gvt requires us to do sth that goes against our faith? What happens if we are in the middle of a revolution? What form of gvt is in view here, and what does this mean in a democratic gvt? etc
Three points:
- This passage is not comprehensive on everything God wants us to know about how to relate to gvt. We need to read the Bible more widely for that.
- The key point here is that Christians need to recognize that gvts are established by God in his ordering of the world. This is an important point. Gvts are, in general, not a nuisance we have to put up with. It is a divine institution which we should joyfully participate in.
And it doesn’t tell us which form of gvt, and what we should think of it. Whenever we see a gvt, we should recognize that it is a divine institution.
Now of course here in the West, we’ve come to believe that democracy is the only inspired form of gvt, and any other form of gvt should be opposed. May I remind you of that Winston Churchill quote: democracy is the worst form of gvt, except for all the other forms.
All forms of gvt will be fallen, merely by thev fact that they are run by fallen men. And yet, Paul wants us to submit to them.
Now the key application here of how to submit is that we should pay our taxes, and respect those in government. But I guess it would include various other forms of being a good law-abiding citizen.
The book of Daniel is a good illustration of this. When Daniel among the other Jewish young men found themselves in a foreign pagan gvt while they were in exile, they served that gvt with utmost excellence. And I think we can follow their example.
But when the gvt overstepped, and required them to do sth that was against their faith, and this is my point.3, they defied those particular instructions.
- Because submission to gvt is predicated on the fact that gvt is established by God, it follows that the greater allegiance is to God.
The government does not have an absolute claim to our allegiance, that’s something that only God has. Which means that, it is possible to generally submit to gvt, while at the same time, in obedience to God, refuse to do, in a given instance, what the gvt requires.
So in Acts 5, when gvt forbids the apostles from preaching, they defy that law. “We must obey God rather than men,” they assert.
When the Egyptian women are instructed to kill all the newborn Hebrew male children, they disobey that law.
And this is the point that Christians in nazi Germany failed to recognize and sadly were complicit with the atrocities the gvt committed.
To submit, whether it is to the priest, or boss at work or husband, never means we must blindly comply no matter what is demanded. It is to recognize and honor the fact that God has established authority figures in relationships. It is an attitude thing.
- Pay the debt (v.8-10)
v.8 Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law.
He’s picking up from what he’s just said in the previous verse, v.7, pay everyone what you owe them.
And the point is not as some have interpreted it, that Christians should not take loans; most of you would not own a home otherwise. It is that if you are a Christian, you want to be a person of integrity. Reliable! Let not debt remain outstanding.
If I was preaching this in Kenya I would probably mention student loans, because that’s the one most people try to evade paying.
In America it would be the misuse of credit cards—but even credit cards are not common here.
Here in the Netherlands, they don’t give you much chance to be in unnecessary debt, though of course, I’m sure debt is still a problem.
Which is a good time to say that we do have a pastoral care ministry here in this church, and if you are in financial problems or of course any other problem, and can’t afford professional help or would like Christian counsel, our pastoral care might be able to point you to someone you could talk to. Many people in this church are good with all sorts of things, and are always happy to volunteer their financial or legal or whatever skills to support.
But even if we pay all our debt, and clear our mortgage etc, there’s one debt we can never fully pay—the continuing debt to love one another.
You see, however much we love someone, we can never say, I’ve loved you enough and now I’m going to stop.” That’s not how love works. It’s a continuing obligation.
One of the church fathers, Origen, puts it like this:
“Let your only debt that is unpaid be that of love—a debt which you should always be attempting to discharge in full, but will never succeed in discharging.”
You see, we will never meet a person in this life to whom we are not indebted to love: it’s a debt we can never pay in full.
But what does love look like in practice?
End of v.8, “for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law;” repeated in v.10, “Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.”
In other words, the command to love one another summarizes the commandments.
Love is the fulfillment of the law does not mean love is the end of the law. As if we do not need the law, all we need is love. No!
We cannot pit love against law.
The command “You shall not commit adultery,” is not a kind of, negative, life-stifling commandment. It is a loving and beautiful commandment as I hope our culture can begin to realize. And most of us here would have stories of people, sometimes even children, who have been so affected by the cruelty of an affair.
And so I think this is a good test, if your definition of love, your understanding of love, means breaking the commandments, these five, and whatever others there might be, which simply means, all God’s rules, then you are probably defining love wrongly.
At least if we speak of love in a biblical way, or as the passage last week called it, genuine love.
Because if love is really genuine, then it will be commandment keeping.
- Dress for the light (v.11-14)
v.11 And do this, understanding the present time: The hour has already come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. 12 The night is nearly over; the day is almost here.
The picture is of an overlap between two ages: the age of evil, the age of darkness; and the age to come when Christ returns to sweep away all evil. The age of light
In other words we are living in What theologians call the Now and Not Yet.
It is like dawn, the sunlight has started coming out, but it is still dark.
I grew up in a culture where everyone woke up at dawn, 5 or 6, to go to the farm. Partly because you want to work before it becomes really hot.
And I think it’s sort of the same thing in the first century.
Paul says, It’s dawn. Time to wake up and dress up. Don’t go outside with your pajamas and duvet:
v.12 So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light.
And then he gives a list of the deeds of darkness in v.13: “carousing/revelry, drunkenness, sexual immorality, debauchery/promiscuity, dissension (quarreling) and jealousy.
It’s not a comprehensive list; but I think a significant one, don’t you think? Especially the last pair, which I think is the most ignored by Christians
Someone once said that, “We Christians find quarreling the hardest sin to give up, and an easy sin to justify.”
Think of all the church politics…
And so put off these deeds of darkness.
And then I think he gives us a practical example of how to do it— that last line in v.14:
and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh.
The ESV says, make no provision for the flesh.
And the idea is one of forethought. Thinking ahead about how to overcome these things.
So if drunkenness is my temptation, forethought means that I don’t keep alcohol at home.
If sexual temptation is the problem, forethought means I will not be alone with the person in private. I will build appropriate boundaries.
If social media is the temptation, forethought might mean taking a break or getting out of social media totally.
Make no provision for the flesh, he says. Think ahead!
And then finally, and this is the imperative, clothe yourself with the Lord Christ.
You see If you clothe yourself with something, it goes where you go. It stays with you always; and I think that’s the sense.
If we are to live well in light of the future, the day of light, we must have Christ on us, with us, in everything we do and everywhere we go. There are no areas of our lives we can say to Jesus, remain at the door; I’ll take you up later.
All our lives must be bare before him, before whom we will give an account on the last day.
And so if you are here and feeling somewhat like Augustine? You want to live a life of virtue, a life of purpose? But it’s hard and you are frustrated with yourself.
I hope you can find something of what Augustine found in these verses: clothe yourself Christ.
These verses are not clobber verses telling us to try harder, pull up our socks. They are not meant to work as a hammer—to beat us up into moral purity.
The imperative is simple: clothe yourselves with Christ. Look to Christ. Embrace Christ. In worship, in soaking in the word, by surrounding yourself with Christ’s people.
And as you do that, you will be captured by a better vision, and your life will be transformed.