The Role of Government (Romans 13:4) — A Sermon by R.C. Sproul

0:37 For he is God's minister to you for good. But if you do evil, be afraid. For he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is God's minister, an avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil. Therefore you must be subject not only because of wrath, but also for conscience' sake. For because of this you also pay taxes, for they are God's ministers attending continually to this very thing. Render therefore to all their due, taxes to whom taxes are due, customs to whom customs, fear to whom fear, and honor to whom honor.

1:35 again this is not the insights of a first century jewish scholar but this is the word of god please be seated Let us pray. Fathers, we continue to explore the implications of these things that are revealed to us in your holy word. We ask that you would grant us clarity of understanding and hearts that are submissive to the rule of your word. For we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. Last week as we came to verse 4, I interrupted my message and said that the contents of that verse are so many and so weighty that I didn't think I could rush through that verse in the few moments that we had left last Sunday evening. And I'd like to read again for you verse 4.

2:44 For he, that is the civil magistrate, is God's minister to you for good. But if you do evil, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is God's minister, an avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil. Now this verse, Romans chapter 13 verse 4b, is one of the most important verses in all of Scripture in terms of the development of historic classic Christian ethics with respect to two monumentally important issues of ethics. Number one being the issue of capital punishment, and number two being the controversial issue of warfare and whether Christians can in good conscience ever be engaged in war. And what is so important about this text is that it is God who has given to the civil magistrate the power of the sword.

4:06 And that concept in the language, that is the phrase the power of the sword, is an idiomatic expression for the power of capital punishment. For the power of using a weapon that can bring death to enforce the law of God. Now, the idea of the swords being used to enforce the law of God is established exceedingly early in the biblical record. record. Let me ask you to move back with me for a second to...

4:52 chapter 3 of the book of Genesis. The third chapter of Genesis records for us the circumstances of the fall of the human race into sin, the seduction of Adam and Eve by the serpent in the garden. And then we read at the end of that chapter in verse 22, these words. Then the Lord God said, Behold, the man has become like one of us to know good and evil. And now, lest he put out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat and live forever, therefore the Lord God sent him out of the garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken. So he drove out the man and he placed cherubim at the east of the garden of Eden and a flaming sword which turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life. So into the addition of the loss of the blessing that Adam and Eve would have received at the hand of their creator had they passed their probation by rendering obedience rather than disobedience.

6:17 Also, the consequences of their sin included the curse that came upon man, the curse that came upon woman, the curse that came upon the earth, and all things in it. And then God drove Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden, where they were forced to live east of Eden, outside of the presence of that paradise in which they were originally placed by their creator. Now, in addition to this exile, in addition to this banishment, where now human beings were forbidden to enter again into the Garden of Eden, lest they should attack even the Tree of Life unjustly, God established a sentinel. He put angels at the gateway to the garden, armed with a flaming sword that turned in each direction in order to prevent any intrusion or invasion into that garden again.

7:37 Here we see the first establishment of physical force as a government and governing restraint upon sinful people in order to guard the entrance to the Garden of Eden. And that image of that sword that was placed there as a guard is the image that is used then throughout Scripture to indicate the authority that is carried by those who were given the responsibility of enforcing the law of God. We know that in the Old Testament there were several offenses that were considered so heinous that for the commission of them, God in the civil code of Israel required the death penalty. Now, if I can just turn briefly further in Genesis to chapter 9, I will read another text that is of ultra-importance in understanding this idea of the power of the sword.

8:57 Chapter 9 of Genesis begins with these words. So God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and the fear of you and the dread of you shall be on every beast of the earth on every bird of the air and all that move on the earth all of the fish of the sea they are given into your hand and every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. And I have given you all things, even as the green herbs. But you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood. Surely for your lifeblood I will demand a reckoning. From the hand of every beast I will require it. From the hand of man, from the hand of every man's brother, I will require the life of man. Now we have this text in chapter 9, verse 6.

9:57 Whoever sheds man's blood, by man his blood shall be shed. For in the image of God he made man. Now here we see the biblical institution of capital punishment for the instance of murder. and I want to just pause for a moment to look at this because the way in which this text is expressed may be easily misunderstood. It says in verse 6, whoever sheds man's blood by man his blood shall be shed. We could misinterpret this text to have it read simply something like that he who lives by the sword shall die from the sword, kind of as a cryptic prophecy of the consequences of living a violent life. But the text here in the original indicates not a future prediction of what would happen to people who shed human blood, but this text is written in the form of the imperative. God is requiring the death penalty for murder. Now, when I say that, I have to also qualify that. If you look through the law code of the Old Testament, you will see that the offense of murder is carefully explained. Distinctions are made in the Old Testament law that would correspond to our distinctions between first and second degree murder, between murder and manslaughter.

11:54 In the case of manslaughter, the penalty was not death but banishment to cities of refuge and so on. But where first degree murder was committed, it was not simply that the law of Israel allowed for capital punishment, but indeed the civil magistrates of Israel were commanded to execute the one guilty of first-degree murder. I remember several years ago when the question of capital punishment was before the state legislature in Pennsylvania. And originally, of course, Pennsylvania did have the death penalty for murder, and then it repealed it for a season and when it was brought up on the docket to be restored to the law of the land, the state legislature voted to restore capital punishment in the case of first-degree murder.

12:58 At that time, that bill to restore capital punishment was vetoed by the governor of the state of Pennsylvania, who himself was Jewish by faith. And the reason he announced to the press for vetoing capital punishment was that because it was unbiblical. He argued that the Bible says simply, thou shalt not kill. And therefore, he said, since God prohibits killing human beings, we must not tolerate the execution of murderers through capital punishment. Of course, if the government would have read just a few pages further in the Old Testament, would have seen that what God required for the violation of the prohibition against murder was the death penalty.

14:00 But many Christians have been strongly misinformed about this biblical position. Now, what I think is so important here about the text that I've just read to you, that when capital punishment was instituted by God to Noah, it was part of a renewal of the covenant of creation. And we have to understand that throughout biblical history we have many, many different covenants that are set forth. There is the covenant that God makes with Abraham and then with Isaac and Jacob, the covenant that is mediated through Moses, the covenant that God makes with David, of course the new covenant that is instituted by Jesus, in the New Testament, but the original covenant is called the covenant of creation. And it's important that when God establishes his law in creation, he does not establish laws just for Jews or just for Christians. But the laws built into creation are those laws that are given to man qua man, to everyone who is a human being. And so every person who is alive on this planet to this day is still under the authority of the terms of the creation covenant. Now we have a lot of people who don't believe in creation, don't believe that they're under any covenant responsibility towards God. But the denial of that covenant and the unbelief in that covenant does not eliminate that covenant. Every human being remains in a covenant relationship with God inescapably. And we are either covenant keepers or covenant breakers. The vast majority of the human race exists in a state of covenant rebellion. Now we notice that after God established this

16:07 covenant in creation and sin came into the world and proliferated so rapidly that God decided to virtually wipe out the human race saying that he would no longer strive with this wicked generation, save for the family of Noah. And the whole account of the flood was the account on the one hand of God's judgment on the mass of fallen humanity, and on the other hand of his grace that was shown to Noah and his family, and Noah's being the instrument of rescue for the wildlife of this world according to God. And after the flood receded, the ark came to rest, and God then reestablished a covenant with Noah, and he set his bow in the sky and said he would no longer destroy the world by the flood. But in that covenant that we call the Noahic covenant, we see the restitution and repetition of the ordinances and laws of the creation covenant.

17:23 Now, why am I laboring this point? The point is this, that this law of capital punishment for murder is not something that is restricted to the law code and civil penalties of Israel in the Old Testament, nor is it a portion of the jurisprudence of the New Testament. But it is a law that is rooted and grounded in creation. That means as long as creation lasts, this principle of capital punishment in the case of first-degree murder is in effect. Let me ask the next question. Why? Why is it in effect?

18:16 A few years ago, I read an article from Larry King. in which he was being outspoken in his criticism of the Christian community for the Christian community's gross inconsistency. And he argued in this manner. He said the Christian community keeps protesting against abortion on demand on the grounds that it involves the taking of human life. While at the same time, these Christians, he said, argue in favor of capital punishment. And Larry King said, I will not support the Christians' opposition to abortion until the Christian church stops its support of capital punishment.

19:16 And you see what Larry King was saying. He said, we're inconsistent because on the one hand we're opposed to killing, and on the other hand we support killing. Now, what I wanted to say to Mr. King, but never had the opportunity, was to show him that there was no inconsistency here at all. You may argue that the Christian church is wrong, that the Bible is mythological and all the rest, But there is a strong and coherent point of consistency that stands behind both the church's opposition to abortion and the church's support of capital punishment. And what that principle is, is this, the sanctity of human life. that principle which resounds on virtually every page of sacred scripture reiterated emphatically by jesus in the sermon on the mind is this that human life is so sacred that we must never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever take it with malice aforethought or out of personal convenience.

20:35 And the reason why human life is so sacred is not because there's some inherent value that is found in human beings that is not found among whales and eagles and burrowing turtles. what makes the value of human life so significant is what is reiterated here in Genesis chapter 9. Whosoever shed man's blood, by man his blood shall be shed. Why? for in the image of God he made man see that's what makes us different from the turtles and the whales and the chickens and the kangaroos that we have been stamped with the image of God and what God is saying here dear friends is this that if somebody with malice aforethought rises up like Cain did to Abel and kills his brother.

21:52 The attack on the human being that the murderer commits is seen by God as an attack on God himself. Because that human being who is murdered is one who is engraved and stamped with the image of God himself. And God is saying this, that human life is so sacred, so important, that if you rise up without just cause and kill your neighbor in terms of first degree murder, you at that moment... have lost all rights and privileges with respect to your own life. You have forfeited your own life. And God gives it not to the victim's relative to seek vengeance, but upon the one to whom he has given the sword to be God's avenger and to see to it that that punishment is carried out.

23:05 Not for the sake of being bloodthirsty, but for the sake of saying to the world, we will not tolerate the murder of human beings. That's the biblical rationale, if you will. The rationale that is seen in the Old Testament. The rationale that is seen again in Romans 13 when we see God ordaining the civil magistrate and giving the power to the civil magistrate to be God's avenger. When he gives him the power of the sword, dear friends, he doesn't give him the power of the sword merely to rattle it. But the power of the sword is given for its use to enforce law and justice. Now, this same verse, the same text, is the single most important text and serves as the locus classicus in Christian history, for Christian ethics, on the question of the just war theory.

24:27 And I'd like to spend a few moments with you tonight to talk about how the just war theory throughout church history has followed the writing here of the Apostle Paul in Romans 13. We go back, for example, to St. Augustine, who made this observation about war and about people's participation in war. he said all wars are evil he excluded from that the divinely ordained conquest of canaan but since we don't have the direct instructions of god from heaven to this day to wage war we are left to make those decisions on the basis of our human understanding and the application of principles drawn from sacred scripture, and on that Augustine said, all wars are evil.

25:26 There's no such thing today as a good war. But, Augustine said, not everybody's involvement in war is evil. St. Thomas Aquinas seconded the motion, and in his moral theology worked out the details of what is involved in a just war. Without going into all of the technicalities of it, the fundamental principle of the just war theory is this, that if one nation or one people aggressively invades or attacks another nation, That nation who has been attacked and is the victim of the external aggression not only has the right but the responsibility to protect themselves from the invading aggressor.

26:34 When Hitler invaded Poland, Czechoslovakia, the lowlands, and the other nations, The local governments of those nations had the moral duty to try to stop the blitzkrieg from coming and enslaving their people. At that point, the warriors for those nations that were being invaded were fulfilling their duty as being civil magistrates bearing the sword to protect the lives of their own people. Now, notice that sentence, to protect the lives. Again, the sanctity of life is what lies behind the just war theory, that life again is so sacred that the civil magistrate has been given the sword to protect the innocent from the evildoer, just as the policeman has been given arms and the right to use arms to stop your wife from being raped, your house from being invaded, your body from being harmed or killed.

27:52 When the civil magistrate uses reasonable force to restrain the evildoer, he is serving not only the community, but he is serving God in that enterprise. And again, when we talk about just war, we're just elevating those principles to the larger domain of national security and national safety. In our day and age where we have the opportunity to invade without ever bringing soldiers across borders, but by sending missiles across oceans and the kinds of sophistication that you see in modern weaponry, issues of just war become more and more and more complex. And obviously the mentality of the New Testament or of the Christian church historically is not to encourage a bellicose national posture or a militaristic style that tries to scare everybody else in the world away. but rather to be an attempt as nations to be good neighbors to other nations, to be loving to other nations, and to use the sword as the last of all possible resorts when the defense of the people becomes a clear and present measure of necessity.

29:28 I remember back in the 60s, the late 60s, in the time of the Vietnam War and the way in which our country was so divided between hawks and doves on that issue I used to listen to the politicians on both sides of that question with their rhetoric and the thing that disturbed me so much was that I heard arguments from both sides, didn't have any soundness to them whatsoever. The hawks were saying, my country, right or wrong, my country. Christians should never say that, my country, right or wrong, my country. If my country's wrong, I must oppose it, particularly when human blood is being shed. and on the other one, they were saying better red than dead and all this other kind of rhetoric and nobody was really looking at the international issues and the issues of international law that were involved in that question.

30:34 Now, the unenviable position I had in the middle of the 60s as a college professor was that I had many, many students who were violently opposed, well, I should say vehemently opposed to the war in Vietnam, who were applying for conscientious objector status. and as was the rule at that time they had to file affidavits to the government and to the draft boards by people who would by penalty of perjury give their testament testimony that in their minds the students conscientious objection was sincere now i don't know how many of those papers I had to fill out for students. And again, my responsibility there was not to give my view on the war, whether I was for it or against it. That was beside the point. All the government wanted to know from me was, in my judgment, did I believe that this particular student was sincere in his conscientious objection to the conflict in Vietnam.

32:01 You understand the difference? Now, so many students filed objections to the war that the Supreme Court of the United States made a decision in those days that was, in my judgment, one of the worst miscarriages of justice I've ever seen and one that was made without a peep from the Christian community. What happened was that the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that no one could be given conscientious objection status anymore unless they could demonstrate that they were opposed to all wars. Let me say it again. And that's the present rule of the land, that you cannot be a conscientious objector to war unless you can demonstrate that you are conscientiously opposed to all wars. You must be a card-carrying pacifist, and you cannot choose your wars.

33:11 Now that's really strange because at the Nuremberg trials, when the war crimes were tried after World War II, officer after officer after officer pled the same excuse for the atrocities that they committed in the death camps in World War II during the Holocaust. They said that they were merely carrying out orders. And it was their superiors that were responsible, not them, because as good German soldiers, they simply did what their commanding officers commanded them to do. And what did the United States argue was their position? Our government argued at Nuremberg that it is the responsibility of an individual soldier to disobey a command given to him by a superior officer if that superior officer commands him to do something evil.

34:19 This is the principle we talked about last week, or at least I talked and you listened, in terms of chapter 13, in terms of our responsibility to be obedient to the civil magistrates unless that magistrate commands us to do something God forbids or forbids us from doing something God commands. In other words, what the position the U.S. took after World War II was that those German soldiers should have been conscientious objectors. without taking the position that everybody's involvement in war is always evil.

35:06 But now, it is the Christian who is discriminated against. If he holds to the just war theory that involvement in war is only legitimate for a Christian if the cause is just. but if I see that my nation gets involved in a war that is not just, even though I hold the position that there are such occasions as just wars, I do not have the legal recourse in my own country to say that I refuse to submit to that order. That's a very, very serious matter. Because as a Christian, before you pick up a gun or a knife or a sword and kill anybody, you better make sure that the cause is just.

36:09 And it's silly to assume that any government on the face of the earth today can be trusted only to be engaged in military activity in a just way. I don't know of any nation in history that has not at one point or another used its own power and authority in an unjust manner. That's why we have to be vigilant. We have to be scrupulous. that when the nation is imperiled and when the nation is involved in the just defense of its borders and of its people and if the civil magistrate calls me to pick up the sword in participation of the civil magistrate's just exercise of the civil magistrate's duty and he conscripts me to do that it is my duty to use the sword.

37:08 But if he conscripts me to engage in an unjust aggression or invasion of an innocent nation, then I am equally obligated to say no. No one ever said that living the Christian life is simple or that making ethical decisions in the Christian life is always an easy matter. As I said last week, the principle is easy. We're always to obey the authorities over us unless those authorities command us to do something God forbids or forbids us from doing something that God commands. We can't disobey the civil magistrate because they inconvenience us, because they burden us with too heavy taxation, or because we disagree with their wisdom. those are not just excuses excuses for civil disobedience but at the same time we're not to render slavish obedience to any authority because authorities can work against the word of god and we have to be very careful whenever we say yay and whenever we say nay to make sure that our decisions are motivated by an earnest desire to obey God in all that he commands.

38:40 But again, this is just a mention in passing that you can see that when Paul writes that the civil magistrate has been given the sword by God, the power of the sword, that he is being appointed to be an avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil. We have to see therein a biblical basis for the establishment of force that is given to civil magistrates. If the civil magistrate uses that sword to promote evil, then the civil magistrate will be judged by God in all of God's wrath. and God himself will take vengeance upon that magistrate and upon such bellicose nations. Remember, dear friends, it is the Lord who raises nations up and it is the Lord who brings them down.

39:45 And we, just as the Christians of the first century who received this letter from the Apostle Paul, when they were in Rome. They knew everything about the corruption of the Roman system. And yet, they listened to their apostle defending the authority that God had given to the Roman Empire to wield the sword. I'm afraid that when we object to capital punishment in principle, When we object to warfare in principle, we are objecting to those very things which God himself has established and instituted. The reason why the sword is necessary is because sin is in the world. And the sword is given to work against and to restrain evildoers in order to protect the lives of the innocent.

40:54 One last thing. We need to understand, in terms of the biblical emphasis on the sanctity of human life, that the primary responsibility, the primary mission, the primary task of any civil government, whether it's in China, Russia, the United States, Iran, or wherever it is, the primary responsibility that God gives to every human government, secular or sacred, is to protect, defend, and maintain human life. and when any government turns its back on that primary responsibility, it is acting in utter defiance to the law of God and is exposing itself as a nation to the judgment of God.

42:04 I've said it before, I'll say it again. in my opinion the most serious ethical issue that this nation has ever had to deal with way more serious than slavery is abortion on demand, the slaughter of the innocent. And now people don't even bother to try to argue that that which is being destroyed is not human life. It's openly acknowledged that what is being destroyed legally, with the sanction of the federal government and of state governments throughout the nation, is the willful taking of human life. The very thing that God appoints government to protect against, the government now supports. That's a travesty on the sanctity of life, and I hope that none of you will ever march in that parade.

43:07 Let's pray. Our Father and our God, we shudder to think of the ways in which the nations of this world have defied your law.

43:28 They will not use the sword when they are called to use the sword, and use the sword when they should never even touch it. Father, give us a capacity to know the difference between good and evil, to know the difference between a just use of force and godless tyranny, and give us the courage to speak when we see these things turned upside. down. For we ask it in Jesus' name.