“Therefore submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake, whether to the king as supreme.”
whether to the king as supreme
The king was supreme in Peter’s day. If he wanted to put someone to death, he could do it without recourse. He had the power over life and death. No one questioned him. No one took a vote on it.
Nero was the king at this time. He governed viciously and was autocratic. His government placed hundreds of thousands of people in slavery. It was a government of corruption, drunkenness, immorality and violence. There was no democracy, no voting.
The Bible does not espouse any special form of government. In fact, the king was the highest authority in the Roman Empire. It wasn’t a democracy.
Principle:
God wants us to recognize the importance of the social order, that is, the divine institution of government.
Application:
God does not want us to submit to a person but to a principle the principle of the national entity (
Romans 13:1-7 ).Every Christian has a responsibility to his nation. It is easy for North Americans to live under their government. If your reading this in China or North Korea, it’s a different story. Being a Christian in those countries costs you more.
However, bad government is better than no government. If we go without government, we have anarchy. We take the law into our own hands. God does not want lynch mobs running around. A child of God should have nothing to do with inciting riots.
Yet the Bible says that we are to “render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s” (
Matthew 22:21 ).The believer’s relationship to government is to be the best citizen possible.
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