Everyone has an opinion. It’s part of what makes us unique and interesting. But opinions invite different opinions, and different opinions often lead to disagreements, and disagreements to divisions.
Church divisions are as old as the Church, and the peaks of historical theology are flagged with the greatest of these (1 Cor. 1:10-13; Titus 3:9-11, etc.). But just as friction can spark a bushfire, so a bushfire can seed new life and in Church history it is almost always the case that theological divisions rejuvenate the spiritual life of the Church as they force us to dig deeper into the Scriptures with a ready willingness to turn the soil on our own convictions by correction from the word of God (if not our interlocutors).
One in nature under a single authority, Christians have everything we need to navigate our differences in a loving manner that is uncompromising in the pursuit of truth. This is one of those liberating realities about the gospel: what is required of us is already true of us: unity (1 Cor. 1:10; Eph. 4:4-6).
Yet with the liberty comes responsibility. In his High Priestly Prayer Jesus prayed to the Father that we “may be perfected in unity” just as he and the Father are united in the Godhead (John 17:23). Essentially, Jesus’ prayer was that we would live out our created design, the imago Dei, the “image of God” (Gen. 1:26-27). Thus reclaimed as the creatures we are, the Christian calling is to live the way we were originally designed: as image bearers, witnesses of the Triune God now met in the love of Christ which met us in the “world” (John 17:23). In other words, Christian unity is a witness of Christian worship. How we deal with our differences is testimony to the world of Jesus Christ.
Pluralism has led to this peculiar cultural moment where what divides us is often greater than what unites us, and it’s part of the reason why our culture has a victimhood mentality. We have lost the art of how to hold different opinions because we have confused acceptance with love and disagreement with hate. This is not the posture of the body of Christ. Christians are united in something – Someone – so great that he unites our differences, whether they be language, culture, colour, demographic, or even COVID vaccinations. Yes, even those. The blood of Jesus runs deeper in our veins than whatever liquid we may or may not have squirted into our arms.
As I have reflected on unity in relation to the Church and government, I have been encouraged to see the themes come together in the context of Romans 13:1-7, perhaps the best known passage on how Christians are to relate to their governing authorities. The context comes in the surrounding chapters where Paul outlines Christian conduct for various relational spheres of life. For example, in chapter 12 Paul considers how we are to conduct ourselves within the context of interpersonal relationships: we are to love without hypocrisy, abhor evil, and do good (v. 9); be devoted to one another in love, respect and service (vv. 10-11); and, amongst a host of others, we are to “be at peace with all men” (v. 18) never taking our “own revenge” (v. 19).
This context is crucial to our understanding of Romans 13:1-7, as it founds the ethos of Paul’s emphatic injunction: “Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities…” (v. 1a).1 Right through everything Paul has to say about Christians in relation to government is the promotion of peace. “[E]veryone” – whomever, wherever – must obey the de facto government of their land. Paul makes no distinction between de facto and de jure governments, nor, to my knowledge, does anywhere else in the New Testament. Christians are to be subject to their governing authorities, whether they be good or bad, pleasant or unpleasant, legitimate or illegitimate.
Of course, Paul’s injunction is not unconditional, but I think we need to feel the discomfort of his emphasis in the immediate text before turning pages to ‘ok’ ourselves with an exception. Paul’s teaching to “everyone” is the rule for the norm, not the rule for the abnormal. Turn the pages of Scripture and you will find occasions where obedience to God is in direct conflict with the laws and statutes of government,2 but these occasions are by no means the norm, to be assumed with every whim of Christian resistance.
Again, this is obvious from the context. Paul wrote Romans to the Church at a time when Nero was having Christian men, women and children torched and eaten alive. Scott Morrison is not Nero and Australia is not Imperial Rome3 (And while we’re at it, Christians should have no party with articles headlining “Dictator Dan” or “Gulag Gladys,” slurs which are grotesquely insulting to both individuals and nothing short of insensitive to those who suffered and died under such regimes).
Australia has a long and twisted way to go before Christians start considering themselves as watchmen, entertaining whispers of defiance or passionate resistance. Rightly or wrongly, the impetus of the vaccine is for the common good; a “good” which the Australian government is seeking to roll out in an organised fashion with its Roadmaps and policies (Rom. 13:4a). We are free to disagree with the roadmaps and policies, we are free to disagree with the science or ethics of vaccinations, we are even free to disagree with the reality of COVID (I hope not), but those of us committed to the authority of Scripture are not free to neglect the emphasis of Paul’s injunction, given as it was during a time and place where Christians were being murdered for sport.
But martyrs of the faith are not only yesterday’s news. In the last day I have received text messages from a believer who is living the horror of those abnormal circumstances where obedience to God is in direct conflict with the ruling government of his land. Yet even so, for the sake of the gospel, there is much hesitation to resist and desist, not only because it would bring the sword, but because of the witness it bears to the truth they embody and proclaim in secret.
History tells and continues to tell of men and women who have embodied the Christian ethos to “be at peace with all men…” (Rom. 12:18). This is the ethos that contextualises Paul’s injunction to “Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities…” (v. 1a), and it helps us understand our relationship to government. It is not weakness, it is Christ-like meekness; it is what saw the eventual turn of Imperial Rome to Christian Rome; it is what saw the civil rights movement at its best when it embodied non-violent demonstrations to bring about social reform. And from Rome to Washington to every circumstance before, between and since, it is almost always the case that those who embodied this ethos did so at great cost to themselves. This is why we read in Scripture about fiery furnaces, dens of lions, prison shackles and Roman crosses.
The just power of governments is not always employed justly. As God gives authority so mankind abuses that authority in sin. But the Aussie Church should keep in mind that the God of our conscience is not necessarily in the thinking of our fellow citizens, legislators and secular-minded jurists caught up in the Zeitgeist. So I don’t think we should expect that broader Australia will appreciate or anticipate the particular concerns we have as Christians, which is why we should use legitimate, lawful instruments and channels to give public voice to our concerns. We must. Christian social action is necessary if we want to adjust the cultural parallax from the here and now to a panoramic Kingdom of God vision, but the instruments and channels by which and through which we act should correspond to the ethos of the Kingdom of Christ to which we are a witness.
It is a sad reality of the contemporary Church that many of our ministries and movements are short-lived. For Christian inspired social change to be permanent, the Church needs men and women who are willing to lay down their rights for a cause greater than their own passions, freedoms, even peace. The Church needs men and women who not only preach a gospel of sacrificial love but are willing to live it whatever the cost.
Footnotes:
- The same injunction is used elsewhere in relation to government (Titus 3:1; 1 Pet. 2:13), and for other spheres of life: in subjection to Christ (Eph. 5:24); elders (1 Pet. 5:5); masters (1 Pet. 2:18); husbands (Eph. 5:22); even of Jesus’ submission to his parents (Luk. 2:51).
- For example, Peter and John in Acts 4.
- To the contrary, we find ourselves at the federal level with Christian Prime Minister, and at the state level, a NSW government bill which will see religious belief protect under the standing discrimination act.
