Stump, Root, and Standard (Isaiah 11:1-12:6)

Trouble and fear are nothing new, and sometimes this time of year magnifies them.  Sometimes the lights, the festivities, and the insistence on joy simply underscore a sense that not everything is “merry and bright.”  We might sing about keeping our troubles “out of sight” or “miles away,” but they keep creeping back in, don’t they?  We need something better than just covering our eyes and pretending.

In Isaiah, through chapters 7-10 there has been plenty of trouble.  Judgment is fast approaching, and currently strong kingdoms have set destruction dates (the “within 65 years,” of 7:8, for instance).  There will be a son called Immanuel (7:14), Counselor, God, Father, Prince of Peace (9:6), but in the meantime wickedness devours and Assyria looms as God’s chosen tool.

But there is hope: the Lord promises starting in 10:20 that the surviving remnant will learn not to count on their unfaithful neighbors, but on the Lord GOD of hosts.  In 10:24-25, this Lord will gather the remnant and destroy the destroyers.  And then chapter 11 brings Judah ultimate hope, a hope that they looked ahead to and that we have seen in all of Christ’s fulness: The LORD announces that one from David’s line will rescue his people, bringing righteousness and peace and ensuring that not a single one will be lost.

Jesus is the Rod of Jesse who brings righteousness and peace (Isa. 11:1-9).

Isaiah says that David won’t stay cut off (11:1).  The tree is cut down—King Ahaz and later Manasseh were too vile to overlook.  When Assyria and Babylon lead Israel and Judah into captivity, when Zedekiah’s sons are killed and they lead him away blinded and in chains, it looks like the promise to David has failed; only a stump (v. 1’s “stem”) is left.

The Lord had spoken through Nathan the prophet in 2 Sam. 7, announcing that rather than David building the Lord a house (in the sense of a temple), the Lord was going to build David’s house (in the sense of dynasty).  We hear the promise echoed in Ps. 89, as Ethan the Ezrahite begins to sing of the mercy and faithfulness of the LORD to David.  Verses 19-37 go into rich, awe-struck detail about how the LORD had sworn to keep and protect David and his descendants, even if those descendants disobeyed.

I will make him My firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth.  My mercy I will keep for him forever, and My covenant shall stand firm with him (Ps. 89:27-28, NKJV).
If his sons forsake My law and do not walk in My judgments…then I will punish their transgression with the rod, and their iniquity with stripes.  Nevertheless My lovingkindness I will not utterly take from him, nor allow My faithfulness to fail.  My covenant I will not break, nor alter the word that has gone out of My lips (v. 30, 32-33).
Once I have sworn by My holiness; I will not lie to David: His seed shall endure forever, and his throne as the sun before Me; it shall be established forever like the moon, even like the faithful witness in the sky (v. 37).

But Ps. 89 was written in the wake of the judgment Isa. 7-10 promised.  Listen to Ethan’s anguish, starting in v. 38:

But You have cast off and abhorred,
You have been furious with Your anointed.
You have renounced the covenant of Your servant;
You have profaned his crown by casting it to the ground.
You have broken down all his hedges;
You have brought his strongholds to ruin.
All who pass by the way plunder him;
He is a reproach to his neighbors.
You have exalted the right hand of his adversaries;
You have made all his enemies rejoice.
You have also turned back the edge of his sword,
And have not sustained him in the battle.
You have made his glory cease,
And cast his throne down to the ground.
The days of his youth You have shortened;
You have covered him with shame (v. 38-45).

But the LORD tells Isaiah there will be new growth.  He had not forgotten his promises, and he did not change his mind.  This promised one is not simply son of David, but a new David, a son of Jesse.[1]  Like a tree growing back from a stump, there would be new life from what had been cut off.  Remember that long list of names in Matt. 1?  The stump still lives.

And this Branch is filled by the Holy Spirit (v. 2).  “The Spirit of the LORD shall rest upon Him”—this could mean, at minimum, an Old Covenant sense of the Lord equipping and strengthening him for service, as he did with David.  But the New Testament says there’s more.  In Luke 1:35, the Holy Spirit overshadows Mary at conception.  In Luke 4:1, Jesus is “full of the Holy Spirit” as he enters the wilderness.  In Luke 4:18, Jesus reads from Isa. 61:1, “The Spirit of the LORD is upon Me…” and says that the verse is fulfilled by Jesus walking into the room.  And in Acts 10:38 Peter says, “You know of Jesus the Nazarene, how God anointed Him with the Holy Spirit and with power, and how He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him.”

The God-Man Jesus is filled by the Spirit of wisdom and understanding—he is the one greater than Solomon.  He is indwelt by the Spirit of counsel and strength—Christ knows what to do, and he is able to do it.  He is inseparable from the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD—he knows the Father intimately and obeys his every desire. 

And because he is the wise, Spirit-filled, LORD-fearing offspring of Jesse, this coming one is the faithful King (v. 3-5).  Like David at his best, he brings justice, making decisions not by people’s appearance or their slick speeches, but based on what is true and right, what lines up with his Father’s view of the universe (v. 3-4).  He upholds the weak and lowly and defeats those who hate God and His people (v. 4).  His weapon is “the rod of His mouth…the breath of his lips” (v. 4)—the same breath that spoke his enemies into existence.  From the Living Word who creates by his word in Gen. 1, to the sharp sword that comes from his mouth to strike the nations in Rev. 19:15, this King’s word is law in a way that no dictator can match—and his every word is faithful and true.  He is dressed in righteousness; Alec Motyer points out that a belt pictures readiness for action,  and what the promised King is ready for is righteousness and faithfulness.[2]  That’s why, when Paul talks about opposing Satan’s schemes that would deny and discredit the gospel, Eph. 6:14 refers to girding our waist with truth—the word the Greek OT uses here for faithfulness.[3]   We fight Satan, not by magical words or special postures, but by imitating our King.

And even as our King wages war against injustice and ungodliness, he brings peace—not by brokering a deal, but by breaking the curse (v. 6-9).  At one level, this fully comes true in the new heavens and the new earth, as sin and death become past tense.  But it starts happening now within the church.  This Christ tears down long-standing barriers—walls between Jew and Gentile, between rich and poor, between male and female, between cultured and uneducated, between Russians and Ukrainians, Palestinians and Israelis, Republicans and Democrats.  If this gospel is true, we have more in common with our brothers and sisters on the other side of any international border you care to name than we do with non-Christians that speak, dress, and vote like us.  And the divisions that (at least to some degree) still lurk in the back of our minds, the ones we grew up with, the ones that may shock us when we realize they aren’t as gone as we meant them to be, remind us that the Christ whose kingdom has come is still in the process of remaking us to fit that kingdom.

But peace will reign, because the Prince of Peace has crushed the serpent’s head at the cross.  It happens because, “having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 5:1).  Every time we meet someone that we used to hate (I mean, that we used to just not get along with, and it was totally their fault; we wouldn’t hate anyone…), and we find that the Spirit has taught us to forgive them, and perhaps has brought both of us into Christ so that instead of an enemy we see a brother or a sister, we announce to a watching world that this Jesus really does bring this kind of impossible, unimaginable peace to a world at war with its Maker and itself.

And as the new David, sprung from the cut-off stump of Jesse’s family tree, rules with wisdom and power, we see that his kingdom is broader than the Twelve Tribes.  Isaiah reveals that

Jesus is the Root of Jesse and the Banner for the Nations who gathers his people (v. 10-12:6).

This stump of Jesse is also the root of Jesse.  He’s not only the son of David, not only the new David, but he’s the “Son of the Most High” that we read about in Luke 1:32, the one who made David.  And like David of old, our King Jesus not only delivers his people, but he teaches us to worship the true God well.

This Branch is a Banner—a signal (v. 10, NASB), a standard (v. 12, NASB).  People from all nations flock to him (v. 10) as he gathers true Israel from out of every land (v. 11-16).  He recovers the survivors out of Assyria and Egypt, Pathros and Cush, Elam and Shinar, Hamath and the islands of the sea (v. 11)—from all the places where his judgment had scattered them.  In the end, there are no “lost tribes” of Israel—his sheep hear his voice and come at his call.

Jesus removes enmity and jealousy (v. 12-13), compels Gentiles to obey (v. 14), and ensures that Gentiles, too, shall seek Him (v. 10).  It’s what Simeon prayed in Luke 2:29: “Lord, now You are letting Your servant depart in peace, according to Your word; for my eyes have seen Your salvation which you have prepared before the face of all peoples, a light to bring revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of Your people Israel.”  Jesus is being revealed to demonstrate the glory of God for both Jews and Gentiles.  We aren’t waiting for a different Messiah—we may not share Abraham’s DNA, but we have been given Abraham’s faith.

What does it look like to seek this Root of Jesse?  It starts by seeing that we didn’t start out with him.  Like Israel of old, our disobedience means that we are under judgment, far from God and at war with him.  By nature we were not filled with “wisdom and understanding;” we didn’t show “knowledge and…the fear of the LORD.”  We didn’t delight in who God is or what he’s like; we didn’t love him or his ways.  Left to ourselves, Jesus’s righteousness is not good news, because the promise that he has come to judge with righteousness means that we stand guilty and worthy of judgment.

But because Jesus has become a man, has stepped out of heaven to walk as one of us, and because at the cost of his own life he has taken on our sins for every person that will trust him and come to him, because by his death he has purchased the peace that Isaiah describes here, there is now the “resting place” that v. 10 talks about, and it—He—really is “glorious.”

And if you come to him, you will find that he has been stricken so that you may be saved—there is no more condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because he saves to the uttermost!  Just as Yahweh struck Egypt and led Israel through the Red Sea on dry land, v. 15-16 pictures the LORD’s mighty hand at work again, recovering those scattered into Assyria and beyond the Euphrates with earth-shaking power.  And it is no less astonishing when he takes spiritually dead sinners, waiting for hell with a dread of death deep in our hearts, and brings us near to him, teaching us to call him our beloved, redeeming Father.

And so our refrain, as we see the Christ, the stump and root of Jesse, is found in chapter 12:

“O Lord, I will praise You;
Though You were angry with me,
Your anger is turned away, and You comfort me.
Behold, God is my salvation,
I will trust and not be afraid;
For Yah, the Lord, is my strength and song;
He also has become my salvation.’ ”
Therefore with joy you will draw water
From the wells of salvation.
And in that day you will say:
“Praise the Lord, call upon His name;
Declare His deeds among the peoples,
Make mention that His name is exalted.
Sing to the Lord,
For He has done excellent things;
This is known in all the earth.
Cry out and shout, O inhabitant of Zion,
For great is the Holy One of Israel in your midst!” (Isa. 12:1-6, NKJV).

Our hope is not that “we will be together if the Fates allow,” or that we can have a one-day vacation from our sorrows and fears.  Our joy comes because the Son of David, the Rod of Jesse who shepherds and protects us, has come, has brought us a righteousness and a peace without waiting for us to somehow earn it, and will never forsake us.  And so we sing, this day and all the others, “Great is the Holy One of Israel in [our] midst!”

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It was a delight to be with Gospel Life Baptist Church in Keyser this morning. Audio of this sermon is available at https://www.gospellife.us/media/4m5mxq4/the-incarnation-jesus-as-the-stump-root-and-standard.

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[1] So Alec Motyer, Isaiah, An Introduction and Commentary, TOTC, (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1999), 103.

[2] Motyer, The Prophecy of Isaiah: An Introduction and Commentary (Downers Grove: IVP, 1993), p. 123 (Logos ed.).

[3] Peter T. O’Brien, The Letter to the Ephesians, Pillar (Grand Rapids: Eerdman’s, 1999), 473.

Submission to Government as Gospel Preaching: 1 Peter 2:13-17

Four years ago, minus a week, I had the privilege of preaching at Grace Chapel.  In God’s providence, we were in 1 Peter 2:13-17, which speaks of how Christians relate to human government.  At the time, that felt uncomfortable, because at first glance it could look like it was timed that way—except that I had started in 1 Peter 1:1 the previous August, and here we were.  That’s one advantage of walking through whole books—we were in this part of 1 Peter, not because of current events, but because it followed right after where we were last week.  That protects whoever is preaching from drifting into whatever our personal soapboxes would be, and it protects the church both from 87 sermons in a row on whatever that soapbox is and from missing what we might shy away from or simply overlook if we bounced from place to place more.

But Christians have always had a complicated relationship with governments.  I mean, Jesus wasn’t even two when he had his first run-in with a king who planned to kill him…  Following Jesus was legal through most of time the New Testament was being written (consider Luke’s positive view of Roman authorities in Acts), though exact details varied from city to city.  Then it became illegal; sometimes ignored or overlooked, but one never knew when that would change.  Then it became legal again under Constantine in 312, and life got even more complicated.  If you have a “Christian” emperor or king, is he now the church’s enforcer (the Western European model)?  Is he the father and de facto leader of the church, as in the east and under Henry VIII?

What about in our (almost unprecedented) situation here in the U.S., where we pick our political leaders?  Are we exempt from having to submit to them, since they work for us now?  Are we obligated to vote for Christians?

Peter gives us clear direction that doesn’t depend on our system of government or who’s in office.  First Peter 2:11-12 is the heading for everything Peter will say between now and 4:11.  He calls us to abstain from fleshly desires that destroy us, and hold to what is excellent, in part with an eye to unbelievers around us.  We don’t want to give unbelieving neighbors further excuses for rebelling against Christ, and we hope instead to see them turn to glorifying God with us.  Now Peter tells us that one way we do this, one way we proclaim the gospel by living it out, is by honoring and obeying those God has providentially placed in authority over us.  He commands us to submit to human authorities in order to please Christ and silence slanderers, living as those who are free in Christ, but who serve God and honor people.

This week, we are watching the inauguration of another new president.  Just as four years ago, our nation is divided roughly in half about what direction is good and wise, and vanishingly few would place themselves in a “no opinion” category.  In looking back over this sermon, some of the names that would come to mind for us may have changed, but Christ’s marching orders for his church haven’t.  For those who are glad of the change in leadership, here is a reminder that our hopes aren’t pinned to this present world, whoever is in the Oval Office.  For those who are disappointed and even fearful about what this change could mean, here is hope, that our path does not depend on winning Washington, or even on confidence that all was done rightly in the election process.  The audio for the sermon is available here, and the text is worked out below.

“Submission to Government as Gospel Preaching” (1 Peter 2:13-17)

I.  Submit to human authorities (1 Peter 2:13-14).

“Submit yourselves”—submitting means recognizing yourself as being under someone else’s authority, and choosing to act accordingly.  And then Peter tells us to whom we submit: “to every human institution”—literally, to “every human creation.”  That word for creation was used outside of Scripture for people setting up cities and temples, whatever people made.[1]  But beyond that, there’s a reminder of government’s limits.  Remember, Caesar was considered, not quite a god, but close ( he was not officially a god until he died…).  But Caesar is a fellow creature—we honor and obey, but we don’t worship.

What kinds of human institutions is he talking about?  Peter doesn’t give an exhaustive list, but mentions examples that get us started.  Kings and governors—and by extension, all those who make and enforce laws, those who are in charge.  That includes Congress, police officers, judges, county officials…it’s a long list.

Why do such institutions exist?  “For the punishment of evildoers and the praise of those who do right.”  The apostle Paul goes even farther in Romans 13:1-7, saying that government is God’s good, common grace gift.  When’s the last time you thought about the IRS or EPA in those terms?

Unlike passages where Paul dealt with questions of authority, such as Ephesians 5-6, Colossians 3, and Titus 3, Peter says less about mutual obligations—he doesn’t directly address those holding government authority.  Does this mean that Peter is more like the pagans, who wrote lists like this, about how to keep subjects and slaves and wives and children under control?  Is Peter less “liberated” than Paul?  No.  Remember, Peter’s writing to a specific group of Christians.  His first readers are not roaming the halls of power—they’re mostly poor, slaves, women (but not all—and notice Peter does address husbands in chapter 3).  He’s showing them how to please Christ right where they are.  But for those who are in positions of authority, whether elected office, or law enforcement, or serving on committees that affect the public good, remember that your work is a demonstration of God’s common grace to the people you serve.  And if you are in Christ, your faithfulness in your responsibilities and the way you carry them out also becomes an opportunity to proclaim the gospel.

But Peter doesn’t ultimately say, “Submit…because governments benefit society by creating stability.”  Instead, he says

II.  Submit to human authorities out of obedience to God (v. 13, 15).

Notice the kinds of reasons Peter doesn’t give for submission.  He doesn’t say, “Submit, because the emperor is a good Christian man who prays for us every day.”  Peter’s talking about Nero here.  This is a man who became emperor because his mother poisoned the previous emperor—her husband.  A man who over the next few years would kill his mother, his wife, and many of his closest advisors.  He was a priest leading the worship of false gods as the so-called Pontifex Maximus, and he likely was behind the burning of Rome.  Just so we’re clear, neither major candidate in last year’s election ever assassinated mama or burned down a major city.

This doesn’t mean that we don’t care about character—to the extent that we get to choose our leaders, it’s better that they be competent and have integrity.  But it does mean that if we get other kinds of leaders, we’re not off the hook from honoring and submitting to them. 

This also means that we needn’t whitewash those in authority, pretending that they are spiritual giants, or even Christians, if they are not.  Some may be.  Most haven’t been—including many of our most capable and admirable presidents.  The name “brother” is too significant to be handed out just as a word of praise.

Peter also doesn’t say, “Submit, because the emperor is doing an outstanding job.”  He doesn’t point to leading economic indicators, number of villas being built, chariot sales…  Peter’s readers were living under the Pax Romana—other than a little over a year of civil war at end of Nero’s reign, 1^st c. Roman Empire was a pretty safe place to be, by ancient standards.  But that isn’t what gives emperor legitimacy.  Again, we would prefer competent leaders, but we don’t get to ignore the lousy ones.

Peter doesn’t even say, “Submit, because the emperor is fulfilling his God-given task of bringing justice, punishing wrongdoing and praising those who do right!”  He does say that’s what an emperor should do.  But again, this is Nero—he started out popular, but became increasingly occupied with his own greatness, his own brilliance, eliminating those who would interfere or disagree.

No, instead Peter says in v. 13, “For the Lord’s sake”—that is, “because of Jesus.”  He says in v. 15, “For such is the will of God.”  Much as children aren’t called to obey parents because parents always get it right, because we’re so wonderful, brilliant, etc., we aren’t called to obey government authorities because of their likability, character, or even fitness for office, but because we wish to obey Christ.

And why is this, in particular, “the will of God?”  Peter tells us: “That by doing right you may silence the ignorance of foolish men.”  Again, back to v. 12—Christians have always been accused of being troublemakers who tore at the fabric of society—saying Caesar isn’t Lord, refusing to drop a pinch of incense in honor of previous emperors (something everyone else but Jews did, roughly like a pledge to the flag), possibly undermining the safety and security of the empire by refusing to worship the Roman gods.  That’s why Justin Martyr, writing about a century later, wrote in an open letter to the emperor and his son, “Everywhere we, more readily than all men, endeavour to pay to those appointed by you the taxes both ordinary and extraordinary, as we have been taught by Him…Whence to God alone we render worship, but in other things we gladly serve you, acknowledging you as kings and rulers of men, and praying that with your kingly power you be found to possess also sound judgment.”[2]  In other words, “we’re your best citizens—you have no reason to attack us!”

Now, no one is likely to watch us paying our taxes and suddenly cry out, “What must I do to be saved?”  But think of the conversations we have to have when some big-name televangelist, naming the name of Christ, gets caught cheating on his taxes and goes to jail.  There is still no valid reason for someone not to confess that Jesus is Lord—but it provides cover!  There are those who would accuse us of using God-talk to get what we want—tax incentives, certain laws passed, maybe a bigger say in the public square.  Our obedience to government—ESPECIALLY when we don’t get our way—is the best answer we’ve got.  If we look like a special interest group—lobbying and buttering up, but fussing and raging if we’re ignored—perhaps it’s right to treat us as just another special interest group.  But if we are citizens of another kingdom, aliens temporarily residing here and abiding by the laws of the land, we’ll approach the situation differently.

And that leads us to Peter’s next point:

III.  Submit to human authorities freely, not out of fear (v. 16). 

When Peter says “as free men,” most translations add some kind of a verb: “act as free men” (NASB), “live as free men” (ESV, others).  But the phrase ties back to v. 13—how we submit.  Tyrants and would-be tyrants have always loved passages like 1 Peter 2.  That may be for the same reason that some of us with a less than starry-eyed view of governments may read this passage with foreboding—“does that really mean what I think it means?”

A few years before taking the throne of England as James I, King James VI of Scotland wrote a book, The True Law of Free Monarchies, arguing that because kings are “God’s lieutenants,” people must obey the king’s every word.  But Peter says we don’t obey the king because of the king.  Whatever station of life we hold, we’re free, because “our citizenship is in heaven” (Phil. 3:20).  Our primary loyalties lie elsewhere.  When Peter was asked about whether Jesus paid his temple taxes (Matt. 17:24-27), he went back to Jesus, and Jesus asked, “‘What do you think, Simon?  From whom do the kings of the earth collect customs or poll-tax, from their sons or from strangers?’  When Peter said, ‘From strangers,’ Jesus said to him, ‘Then the sons are exempt.’”

In other words, Jesus says it’s his temple; he doesn’t actually have to pay the tax.

And yet, you’ll remember that he sends Peter out to catch a fish that would have enough money its mouth to pay the tax for Jesus and Peter both.  He pays the tax, not out of obligation, but “so that we do not offend them” (v. 27).  He chooses to pay to avoid the distraction from his main point.

And lest we be tempted to see a loophole here—“Oh, good, laws are optional because I’m a citizen of heaven instead of the U.S.”—Peter warns us: “Do not use your freedom as a covering for evil, but use it as bondslaves of God.”  And our Master and Father has said that we are to submit.

They may be dumb laws that any thinking person should be able to see don’t make sense.

Obey them, anyway.

They may involve taxes that we don’t think are fair, or that we think will be wasted or misused.  I’m quite sure I’ve got a better plan for my money than anyone else’s plan for my money.

But Jesus says it isn’t mine.

“Whose picture?  Caesar’s?  Then render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.”

If the United States government announces that they’re going to a blanket flat tax of 50%, and they’re going to fund all manner of horrendous things that displease God, and then spend the rest on gummy bears for terrorists, will we pay?  Yes.  Not because it’s a good idea (and unlike in Rome, we have a chance to unelect Caesar every few years—use it), but because our true King tells us to submit by paying our taxes.

Dictators—real dictators, not just “people in authority that I wish weren’t there because I don’t like their laws”—rule by fear.  Lenin was a genuine dictator, and he had thousands arrested on made-up charges just to keep everyone off balance.  But there’s no fear here!  We are in a position to tell whoever is ruling, “There’s no need for threats, I intend to obey you—because the King of heaven says that obeying you pleases Him.”  There’s no groveling, no strutting, just simple obedience, even when it would be more convenient not to.

And finally,

IV.  Submit to human authorities as part of a bigger picture (v. 17).

“Honor all people”—it’s the same word for honor as we saw back in v. 4, 6, 7 as “precious” or “precious value,” speaking of the honor due to Christ.  The word has to do with treating someone with the respect and weight they deserve as those who imperfectly but really reflect the image of their Maker.  Notice “all people,” because there are no people not made in the image of God, meant to reflect something of God’s glory, to know and love Him and to cause others to know and love Him more fully.  No one should be taken lightly or shrugged off.  That doesn’t mean we don’t give each other grief—but we do it in fun, not to tear apart.  It doesn’t mean we don’t disagree, even strongly and vocally—but it means we go after ideas rather than people.

And then Peter gives three more commands that zoom in on how we think about honoring all people:

“Love the brotherhood.”  We’re called to honor all people, to love our neighbor (believing or not), but even more so our brothers and sisters in Christ.  Our lead pastor often gives the example of loving his wife differently from other ladies in the church.  By extension, we don’t not love unbelievers, but we love those who are in Christ in a different, more intimate way.

“Fear God.”  What does that have to do with “honor all people”?  Ed Welch of the Christian Counseling and Education Foundation has said it well: The person who fears God will fear nothing else.  If we truly fear God in a 1 Pet. 1:17 sense, seeing the seriousness of sin and the cost paid by Christ to rescue us out of judgment and into his family, leading us to be utterly committed to please him, no matter what, we won’t respond to others out of a fear of man that imagines what they would do to us or think of us, but out of a desire to reflect Christ in the way we treat others.  Commentator Greg Forbes puts it well: “All fellow human beings, foremost the emperor, are to be honored, fellow believers are to be loved; but God alone is to be feared.”[3]

And finally, “Honor the king.”  It’s the same word—the same honor is given to emperors as to everyone else; his rank doesn’t bring a special category of reverence and awe.[4]  But if he gets no more honor than everyone else, he also should have no less.  Election to public office does not mean open season for disrespect, mocking, reviling.  Over the years I have tried to teach my students, and now our kids, to refer to the president as President So-and-so, or Mr. So-and-so, whether we agreed with his policies or not, whether we like him as a person or not.  Honoring doesn’t mean agreeing with someone—it does mean that we’ll disagree without name-calling or bringing their parentage into question.

V.  Three points of application:

1.  Government isn’t nearly as big and powerful as it thinks it is—to do good or ill.  So part of loving our neighbors, of doing good for them, may be to write letters and make phone calls advocating for good laws to make our country, state, or city a better place to live.  But if those good laws aren’t enacted, don’t despair or panic—we keep loving our neighbors, mostly close to home.  For example, early Christians lived in a society where infanticide was pretty routine.  Their primary answer wasn’t to write the emperor—instead, they took babies thrown out in the street to die and raised them as their own.  What we do in day-to-day life will likely far outweigh that letter or Facebook debate.  By all means, try to elect people who will do more good than harm, talk to lawmakers—but remember that that isn’t how genuine, lasting, eternal change happens.  That kind of change happens as people come to know and love Christ, as they are joined by faith to a new kingdom.

2.  Between now and the next election, take whoever’s in charge as a given.  Peter didn’t get worked up about who was in office; you and I don’t have to, either.  If you’re glad about who got elected to whatever position, give thanks for God’s providential goodness, and then move on to more important things—living for Christ day by day.  If you didn’t get your way in the last election, give thanks for God’s providential wisdom, who arranges to use even bad leaders for the good of his people,  and then move on to more important things—living for Christ day by day.  Either way, don’t waste day after day refighting the last election, arguing about what should have happened, or counting down the next three and a half years to the next one.  Charleston and Washington are far too small to occupy our focus for too long (and it’s easy to forget, isn’t it?).

3.  Remember, this particular human authority won’t last.  There are no more Roman emperors.  At the time of the Reformation, Spain ruled roughly half the world; now it barely rules itself.  The sun never set on the British Empire at its height—but it’s been eclipsed.  The U.S. was considered a backwoods, distant, relatively unimportant nation until about a hundred years ago.  A day will come when, if there is a United States, it will likely be weaker, marginalized, a has-been nation.  It may be a matter of years, or it may be centuries out.  But nations don’t last forever. 

Despite what you’ll hear about the 2020 election being “the most important, historic, life-or-death election ever (since the last one),” the results are at most medium-term.  But there is a King who sits on his father David’s throne, who will never be unseated, will never diminish, but will reign over the universe forever.  And he calls us to follow him, and to rule with him forever.  We who are in Christ can submit to most any government, because it’s only for a little while.

“Submission to Government as Gospel Preaching” was first preached January 29, 2017, at Grace Chapel Baptist Church of Kingwood, WV.

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[1] Grudem, TOTC, 119.

[2] Justin Martyr, First Apology, chap. 17 (ANF, Vol. 1, p. 168).

[3] Exegetical Guide to the Greek New Testament, 83.

[4] Schreiner, NAC, 133.

A Hymn for Good Friday

He who clothes himself with light as with a garment

Stood naked at the judgement.

On his cheek he received blows

From the hands which he had formed.

The lawless multitude nailed to the Cross

The Lord of glory.

 

Today is hanged upon the tree

He who hanged the earth in the midst of the waters.

A crown of thorns crowns him

Who is the king of the angels.

He is wrapped about with the purple of mockery

Who wraps the heaven in clouds.

—Orthodox hymn for Good Friday, tr. by George Papadeas, in Greek Orthodox Holy Week and Easter Services (Daytona Beach: Patmos, 2007), 322; quoted in Michael Reeves, Rejoicing in Christ (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2015), 59.