Romans 13
Romans 13
D. The Christian Attitude to Civil Rulers, 13:1–7
1Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. 2Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. 3For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and he will commend you. 4For he is God’s servant to do you good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God’s servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. 5Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also because of conscience.
6This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, who give their full time to governing. 7Give everyone what you owe him: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor.
There has been a very wide divergence of opinion about the way this passage is to be understood. Since it forms a unit without formal grammatical connection to what precedes or follows and since verse 8 would follow quite naturally on 12:21, some see it as an interpolation into a letter that originally lacked it. This is strengthened by the fact that there is nothing quite like it anywhere else in Paul (though attention may be drawn to 2 Thess. 2:6–7). Nor is there any mention of Christ in these verses. All this leads O’Neill to the view that they are not only non-Pauline, but non-Christian (he thinks they come from a Stoic source).1
Others find the passage an integral part of the epistle (“There is no reason to dispute the authenticity of the text” [Käsemann, p. 351]). After his words forbidding private vengeance it was necessary, it is argued, for Paul to point out that this does not mean that the state may not take punitive action. It has been pointed out that the apostle is writing to people in Rome, the capital of the world, the seat of empire, and it would be suitable to say something to them about the role of the state. Again, there were Jews who took strong exception to acknowledging any heathen king (cf. Deut. 17:15) and who objected to paying taxes to support a heathen state.2 Sometimes it is argued that the Jews in Rome may well have been restive (cf. the rioting about “Chrestus” of which Suetonius wrote and Claudius’s expulsion of the Jews from that city, Acts 18:2; it is conjectured that some of them may have had ideas akin to those of the Palestinian Zealots who recognized no king but God and would pay taxes to no one but God); Paul may have wanted to dissuade Christian Jews in the capital from taking part in revolutionary movements.3
Such considerations seem to show that we must take this passage seriously in its present context. It is part of what Paul is saying to the Romans and it has abiding significance for Christian readers in all ages. Jesus taught his followers that they must “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s” (Mark 12:17), and several other passages urge the believer to obey the authorities (1 Tim. 2:1–3; Tit. 3:1; 1 Pet. 2:13–17; cf. Prov. 8:15; Jer. 29:7; Dan. 2:21, 37–38, etc.). This passage seems accordingly to be Paul’s considered treatment of a theme that was important for the early Christians. Many of them were Jews, with Jewish reluctance to be ruled by a foreigner. Christians were in an ambiguous position vis-à-vis the authorities. If they were regarded as a variety of Judaism, they came under the umbrella protection afforded people of that nation (cf. Gallio’s refusal to take action in what he saw as a dispute among Jews, Acts 18:12–16). But if they were seen as a distinct religion, they had no protection. What attitude should they adopt to people who might at any time persecute them?
Paul’s view is distinctive.4 He is firmly convinced that God is in control and that nobody secures a position or rulership unless God permits. Ordered government is not a human device, but something of divine origin. The servants of God must accordingly submit to its laws. Paul regards rulers not as autonomous, but as “established by God” (v. 1); the ruler is “God’s servant” (v. 4). This gives the ruler a special dignity but at the same time stresses that his position is a subordinate one. He is to do, not whatever he wishes, but what the will of God is for him in his situation.
This understanding of the state has been strongly criticized on the grounds that it justifies every tyrant and compels the believer to obey him.5 It is this that is behind O’Neill’s remark cited above that no passage has caused more unhappiness and misery than this one. But it must be borne in mind that Paul is writing in general terms to meet the need of the Romans and not legislating for every conceivable situation in which the Christian might find himself. He does not face, let alone resolve, the problem of when it is right to rebel against unjust tyranny (it has well been remarked that the first-century Romans had no experence of a successful revolt), or what to do when there are rival claimants to the crown or conflicts between civil and religious authorities. He does not distinguish between legitimate and usurped authority, nor go into the question of when a successful rebel may be held to have become the legitimate ruler. He does not speak of the situation in which the state asks the citizen to do something against the law of God. All the New Testament writers were clear that they must obey God rather than men (Acts 5:29),6 and Paul’s whole manner of life shows that he accepted this wholeheartedly. He does not say what the Christian should do when the state fails in its duty. He is not trying to cover every situation. His concern is authority, however it has come to be possessed. He is writing out of a settled order where there is no doubt as to who the ruler is, and he is telling his readers something of the duty of a citizen in such a situation.
Paul owed a good deal to the protection the Romans had afforded him, but he was not unaware of the fact that the state could be unjust. No Christian could, for the atoning death of Jesus lay at the very heart of the faith and that death had been brought about on the human level by evil and unjust people (though even here the early Christians saw God at work even in the deeds of evil men, Acts 4:24–28). The man who had been often in prisons in the Roman empire and had frequently been flogged (2 Cor. 11:23) was not unaware that the authorities can be unjust. For that matter he knew that he himself had been unjust when he was one of the authorities that persecuted the church. But here he is writing about the state’s essential nature, about what it should be and in some measure at least is. Rulers may misuse the authority God has given them, but Paul’s point is that that does not alter the fact that it was God who gave it to them. People are often tempted to evade their civic responsibilities (and not only in the first century); Paul reminds them of the significance of those responsibilities. Order is important, and the state embodies order.
We should be clear that Paul is writing about the existing state, not some ideal state that he hoped would appear. Every state has its faults, and first-century Rome had many. But it still had to be treated as the ruling authority and as such as the servant of God.7
Mention should be made of the view that Paul has in mind angelic beings of the kind designated “principalities and powers” (8:38; Eph. 6:12, etc.). This was argued by M. Dibelius and taken up by O. Cullmann (The State in the New Testament [London, 1957]; Christ and Time [London, 1951], pp. 191ff.; Clinton D. Morrison (The Powers That Be [London, 1960]) and others. It is clear that the state is in mind in, for example, verse 4, so the position is stated in terms of angelic beings behind the state. But there are strong reasons for rejecting this view. The angelic beings in the New Testament are never regarded as the servants of God, but as enemies defeated by Christ (Col. 2:15). Again, references in this chapter to “God’s servants”, to “the sword”, and to taxes surely point to humans, not spirit beings. The difficulties are too great, and not many hold this view in recent times.8
1. There is no connecting participle, but this paragraph follows naturally on 2:19–21; the Christian is not to seek private vengeance, so what are we to say of the state when it punishes wrongdoers? Everyone is more exactly “every soul”, a Hebraism with the meaning given by NIV (the Hebrews said “every soul” where we say “every body”, but the meanings are the same). Paul is referring to a universal duty. He makes no distinction between Christians and non-Christians; this is a duty incumbent on people simply as people.9 Authorities10 means those who exercise authority, and is here defined as governing11 authorities. Paul says everyone is to submit himself to these rulers. GNB, Moffatt, and others render the verb “obey”, but this does not seem to be the meaning; NIV is correct with submit.12 Submission may well include obedience, at least on some occasions, but we should observe what Paul says. Wilckens reminds us that, while the word may be used of the reaction to authoritative commands, it is used also of Christians being subject to one another (1 Cor. 16:16), where, of course, it is not easy to think of obedience. Even less so is this the case with “Submit to one another” (Eph. 5:21); consistently taking the lowly place over against one another is understandable, but obeying one another consistently is not. There is nothing servile about the attitude to authority that Paul is advocating. He simply looks for a due recognition of the subordinate place that is part of the Christian understanding of life. The Christian is subordinate because he recognizes that the brother is Christ’s representative to him, and in a different way the ruler, who is “God’s servant” (v. 4), is Christ’s representative too.13
For introduces a reason for this. All authority comes in the end from God. This means that “the authority of the state is a delegated, and not an absolute authority” (Wilson), that authority must always be respected, and that an uncritical obedience is impossible. Anything in the directions given by authority that is manifestly not from God shows that the authority has exceeded its lawful function. That, however, is a deduction from what Paul is saying and not his point here. That point is simply that all human authority comes ultimately from God. Paul first puts it negatively, there is no authority except from God, then positively, the existing authorities are from God.14 There are problems with this statement, but clearly de facto government is to be respected (even if we think it is not de jure). Order in the state and the authorities that enforce that order are of divine origin; they would not be there without that. On what Paul says the Christian is not justified in refusing obedience to the state because he has his doubts about the legal standing of the government. The Christian is to recognize that order is important in any state.15 But if the state exceeds its lawful function, if it plainly directs subjects to actions that are wrong, then that is another matter. Jesus said that we are to render to Caesar only the things that are Caesar’s, for we are to render to God what is God’s (Mark 12:17), and Christians have always understood that “We must obey God rather than men!” (Acts 5:29). Paul does not say this in set terms, but that is a legitimate deduction from his view of the state’s delegated authority, which is all that it has.16
2. Consequently17 introduces “a conclusion based on the judgment in the previous verse” (TH). Because God has willed that there be orderly states, anyone who sets himself in opposition rebels against what God has ordered. NIV’s rebels and is rebelling translate two different words (cf. NEB, “rebel … resist”; Moffatt, “resist … oppose”).18 They are different ways of expressing the thought of asserting oneself in the face of authority. Paul is making it clear that the believer is to respect the state and not make himself the final arbiter. What God has instituted is better “a divine institution” (NEB), for Paul is using a noun, not a verb.19 Clearly he is giving the ordinances of the Roman authorities a very exalted place and expecting that his readers will obey them. “Resistance to legitimate authority legitimately exercised is wrong” (Manson). To resist the authorities God has set in place is to resist what God has commanded, and such resisters will bring judgment on themselves.20 The judgment may be the punishment inflicted by the authorities or the divine judgment; more probably it is both: the punishment carried out on the order of the authorities is itself the way the divine judgment works out.
3. It is possible to take the For that begins this verse as referring to what immediately precedes, but it is better to see it as giving an additional reason for being subject to the authorities. Paul changes from “authorities” to rulers,21 but the change is probably stylistic. Rulers, he adds, are not a terror22 to people who do right,23 but only to wrongdoers, a statement which presents a problem in view of, say, the persecuting emperors. But, of course, Paul is not directing himself to such problems. He is presenting the norm, laying down conditions for living in a state in normal times, not covering every eventuality. And, of course, no ruler ever favors wrong and punishes what he regards as right. Paul’s point is that Christians are not to see themselves as free to obey duly constituted authority or not, just as they please. Submission to duly constituted authority is a divinely instituted good, not an evil to be endured with as good a grace as can be mustered. NIV makes the next part of the verse a question, Do you want… ? which is certainly possible. But the words might be taken as a statement. Turner sees this as an example of an independent clause serving as the protasis of a condition, and translates “If you wish to be fearless of.” He adds, “Such interpretation lends point to the context and is good Greek” (M, III, p. 319).24 The change to a direct address to the reader using the second person singular makes the exhortation more vivid, but it is still general. Whether we take the construction as a question or a condition, it leads in to the command do what is right. Paul wants his readers to be law-abiding citizens, assuring them that then they will be commended.
4. In the Greek the word God’s comes first for emphasis. The ruler is God’s servant, no less. And servant reminds us that he is no more; he is not God even if some rulers have had very exalted views of themselves and their functions. The word servant25 originally signified the service of a table waiter and denotes lowly service in general. However exalted he may be among people, the ruler is nothing more than a lowly servant before God. And he is a servant “to you”,26 a phrase that adds a personal touch. The ruler’s function concerns the individual subject. And this function is “for good”.27 The authority is God’s servant to bring about good and not something else, but this “good” can be understood in more ways than one. Some hold it to mean the good of the individual, his prosperity. Or, bearing in mind 8:28 where God works everything for good, it is possible to see the words as meaning that what the ruler does will in the end promote God’s purpose for the blessing of his people, that is, their salvation. Another possibility is that the rule is to bring about conditions for a tranquil and quiet life in which God’s people can serve him effectively (cf. 1 Tim. 2:2). Or again, the good may be the good that subjects do; authority may be exercised not so much in the interest of the person as that the person may be led to do the good. This is supported by the fact that the passage immediately goes on to deal with the opposite: But if you do wrong. None of these suggestions is impossible, and Paul may possibly have more than one of them in mind. But perhaps there is most to be said for the last mentioned. The ruler is God’s servant to enable God’s other servants to get on with the job of doing God’s will. We should not overlook the point that the ruler is to act responsibly.28
But if the subject does wrong he is in trouble.29 Be afraid, says Paul, and the present points to a continuing process, “fear continually”. There is something to be very much afraid of: he does not bear the sword for nothing.30 This certainly means that the government is armed and can use force, but whether it means more than this is far from certain. Many see a reference to the Roman ius gladii, the right to inflict the death penalty. But Paul does not use this expression or a translation of it. Further, the ius gladii is sometimes misunderstood as though at this time it meant the right of any magistrate to inflict the death penalty. But A. S. Sherwin-White has shown that “For the first two centuries of the Empire the term referred only to the power given to provincial governors who had Roman citizen troops under their command, to enable them to maintain military discipline without being hampered by the provisions of laws of provocatio.”31 Others point to the carrying of a sword before higher magistrates or to the Emperor’s wearing of a sword. Whatever there may be in such suggestions, Paul’s point is that it is folly for subjects to do what displeases government, for the authorities have great punitive capacity.
A second time Paul refers to the ruler as God’s servant, and a second time he has God’s first for emphasis. The Emperor on his throne, and for that matter any petty local bureaucrat, might well see his power as something to be exercised as he chose. But Paul is clear that everyone in any position of responsibility is first and foremost God’s servant and that it is to God that he will one day be forced to render account. The authority is not an independent operator, but an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.32 Wrath means “God’s wrath”. Paul has spoken of the eschatological wrath (2:5) and of God’s wrath in the present (1:18). Now he adds the thought that civil government can be an agent of the divine wrath when it punishes wrongdoing.33 It is as the punisher of evil that the authority is viewed as God’s servant.
5. Therefore34 draws a conclusion. Because the authority is God’s servant and is there to punish wrongdoing, therefore the Christian must submit.35 It is necessary to be subject to state authorities, and that not only36 because we are in trouble if we do not. That in itself is a valid reason, and we should notice that possible punishment is not really what Paul is saying but “on account of the wrath”. Again he is referring to the wrath of God manifested in the punishment inflicted by civil authorities. RSV has “God’s wrath”. This makes the reference to God specific and brings out the meaning of what Paul is saying.
To this Paul adds but also because of conscience—a most significant addition. Christians obey the authorities not only because of what will happen to them if they do not but because it is right. They give positive and enthusiastic cooperation to promoting the right things the state does. “It is only such conscientious approbation which will make of our obedience a vital participation in the mission with which the civil authority is entrusted” (Leenhardt). The failure to do one’s duty in relation to the state is to violate one’s conscience as well as to invite punishment.37 Conscience is a powerful reinforcement of the outward directions to submit to the state. But once conscience is brought in, there is a limit: what is against conscience cannot be done. The believer may have to refuse obedience on the grounds of conscience. This is what members of the early church did (cf. Acts 5:29).38 Conscience at one and the same time obliges us to be obedient and sets a limit to that obedience.39
6. Paul proceeds to relate the paying of taxes to this fact.40 Taxes are not just an arbitrary impost. They are the means of carrying on responsible government—the state could not exist without them.41 It is because the authorities are God’s servants and because they give their full time to governing that taxes must be paid.42 The word for servants43 differs from that used twice in verse 4.44 Paul follows this with an expression not easy to put into English and which most translations omit (though cf. KJV, “upon this very thing”).45 It points to a concentration on the collecting of taxes. The authorities make this their business.
7. Paul calls on his readers to pay what is due to everyone. NEB takes this to mean “to all men”, while GNB has simply “them”, meaning the collectors of taxes. The Greek could mean either, but in this context it surely refers to payment to the authorities, for Paul goes on to spell out what is to be paid.46 NIV distinguishes between two Greek words with taxes and revenue. The first word is one we have already seen in verse 6. Strictly it means “tribute”,47 whereas the other term refers to customs duties and the like.48 It is probable that Paul is not distinguishing sharply between the two but saying in effect, “Whatever taxes you owe”. Respect49 moves away from the realm of taxes and indicates a proper regard for those in high places, as does honor. It is not easy to grasp the distinction Paul makes between them. Cranfield takes seriously the idea that respect is to be paid to God (as in 1 Pet. 2:17), but this seems to be introducing something into the text that is not there. While Paul would have agreed that people should respect God, he is here talking about the attitude they should have to the authorities, not their whole duty to God and man. He is saying that Christians should have a respectful attitude to those in high places, not for secular reasons such as that they are important or wealthy or powerful, but because God has made them his ministers. Their work confers on them a dignity that Christians should observe.
E. The Christian Attitude to People in General, 13:8–10
8Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellow man has fulfilled the law. 9The commandments, “Do not commit adultery,” “Do not murder,” “Do not steal,” “Do not covet,”a and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this one rule: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”b 10Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.
From the attitude to the ruling authorities he expects to see in believers Paul turns to that to people in general. The Christian should be characterized by love, love to other Christians but also to people in general. In short, the Christian is to be a loving person.
8. Let no debt remain outstanding is more exactly rendered “Owe no one anything” (RSV), but NIV makes it plain (as RSV perhaps does not) that Paul is not forbidding borrowing. Jesus permitted this (Matt. 5:42), and circumstances may well arise in anyone’s life in which a debt is permissible. But Paul is saying that the believer should not leave debts unpaid; they should be settled promptly. The present imperative50 will have a continuous force: “Don’t continue owing. Pay your debts.”
He has just said that they should pay what they owe to officialdom; now he moves the same obligation into private life. But he goes beyond the payment of debts in the ordinary sense to the thought of a debt that can never be discharged, the debt of love.51 We may pay our taxes and be quit. We may give respect and honor where they are due and have no further obligation. But we can never say, “I have done all the loving I need do.” Love is a permanent obligation, a debt impossible to discharge.52 As Origen put it long ago, “The debt of charity is permanent, and we are never quit of it; for we must pay it daily and yet always owe it” (cited in Dodd). Notice that Paul does not refer to this as a work of supererogation, an outstanding achievement that we look for only in the greatest of saints. He sees it as a duty resting on the humblest believer. Whatever else we do or do not do, we are to love.53
One another is sometimes taken as meaning “fellow Christians”, but it is difficult to hold that in this context Paul is limiting love. This is all the more the case in that he goes on to refer to loving “the other” (NIV, his fellow man),54 on which GT says “the other, when the relation of conduct to others is under consideration is often put by way of example for any other person whatever, and stands for ‘the other affected by the action in question’ ”. It is “the other person” in the sense “any other person with whom I have to do.”
The believer who loves like this has fulfilled the law, where it is surely the law of Moses that is in view, though, of course, this is true of any law (the absence of an article with law may be meant to help us understand this). Paul is repeating what Jesus said about the law being summed up in the commandments to love (Matt. 22:37–40). There is an air of completeness about the use of the perfect tense of the verb (Phillips translates “has obeyed the whole Law”). But we ought not to think that love is a legal requirement. As Bengel puts it, “To love is liberty”, and Brunner, “the commandment of love can be neither correctly understood nor rightly fulfilled as law.” Love is something poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit (5:5).
9. “For” (which NIV omits) brings out the logical connection. Paul proceeds to cite four of the ten commandments to show that if one loves, these commandments will be fulfilled.55 He omits the commandments that refer to God, presumably because he is dealing with the duty to one’s neighbor, and he omits the commandment not to bear false witness because he is not giving a complete list and this is surely to be included in whatever other56 commandments there may be. He is citing some typical requirements of the law simply to show that love fulfils all that they lay down. He speaks of the commandments as being summed up57 “in this word” (NIV has rule)58 and goes on to quote Leviticus 19:18, Love your neighbor59 as yourself. This is sometimes taken as justification for self-love, but neither the commandment nor Paul says as much. The fact is that people do love themselves, and “God addresses His command to us as the men that we actually are, the sinners who do, as a matter of fact, love ourselves, and claims us as such for love to our neighbours” (Cranfield).60 Paul is saying in strong terms that believers must love the people they do in fact encounter. It is easy to “love” in an abstract way, but Paul wants his readers to love the people they actually meet day by day (with all their faults). Love is something that takes effect in the marketplace, in the workshop, in the village green, wherever people are met.61
10. In a neat chiastic sentence that begins and ends with love Paul proceeds to personify this virtue and goes on to tell us that love does no harm to its neighbor. The negative way of stating it is perhaps due to the fact that law is mostly concerned with things people must not do; certainly over Paul’s writings as a whole love is much more than a negative virtue, an abstaining from harm. But where the law is concerned, it is this that is important.
Therefore introduces a consequence of this function of love; it fulfils all that law requires. Lagrange comments that love is not only the fulfilling of a precept “but something that includes the plenitude of all the precepts and all the works.” Nygren reminds us that love is the fruit of the Spirit and that against such there is no law (Gal. 5:22–23). Law is against sin, not against love. “To live ‘in Christ,’ to walk ‘in love,’ is something entirely different from living under the law and striving to fulfill all its requirements; and yet the law is fulfilled in it.” Love is all-important in the servant of God; without genuine love service will always be defective.62
F. Living in the Light, 13:11–14
11And do this, understanding the present time. The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. 12The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. 13Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. 14Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature.a
Paul adds a section drawing attention to the urgency of getting on with the business of living as Christians should. In view of the coming of “the day” they should live wholeheartedly for Christ.
11. “And this”, says Paul (into which NIV inserts do; Moulton also favors understanding an imperative [M, I, p. 182]; the expression is found again in 1 Cor. 6:6, 8; Eph. 2:8; Heb. 11:12). It adds something that heightens what has just been said. Godet gives the force of it as “And all that (we fulfil) knowing….” Understanding renders a participle63 which might conceivably renew the imperative of earlier verses or might be taken as an indicative (as RSV, “you know”) but is probably better taken as NIV. “Knowing the time”, Paul says (NIV has inserted present), certain conduct is appropriate. His word for time64 points to the character of the age in which he found himself, a time in which Christ had come and made all things new and which pointed forward to the consummation of all things. So he goes on to say that already65 The hour has come66 for you67 to wake up68 from your slumber. “Already” gives a touch of urgency to his exhortation; he is not speaking of some remote period for which they could make leisurely preparation but of imperative action now. Many understand him to mean that the second coming was to take place in the very near future, but we should be clear that that is an interpretation; it is not what Paul says. There are many places where the New Testament writers make it clear that they did not know when the Lord would come again (e.g., Matt. 24:36; Mark 13:32; Luke 21:8–9; Acts 1:6–7; Rom. 11:25; 1 Thess. 5:1–2; 2 Thess. 2:1–3, 5). But that he would come and that they should be ready for him gave a note of urgency to all that they said (cf. 1 Pet. 4:17; Rev. 1:3; 22:10). Brunner remarks that “Faith is indeed nothing but living which the light of what is to come.” It is that kind of living which Paul calls for. Slumber will denote a lethargic Christian life; it “suggests the thought of forgetfulness of God” (Thomas).
Paul gives a reason in the nearness of salvation. This will point to the consummation of all that is implied in being saved. Salvation may be spoken of as something accomplished in the past (Eph. 2:8), in the present (1 Cor. 1:18), or in the future (5:9). Here the future is in mind: Paul is saying that it is nearer to us69 than at the time when we first believed.70 Paul writes elsewhere, “We eagerly await a Savior from there (i.e., heaven)” (Phil. 3:20), and it is something like that that he is saying here. There is the thought of eager expectation and the thought that the fulness of all that salvation means is yet to come.
12. There is no connective. Paul does not explain what the night is, but clearly he is referring to this present life as in some sense lived in darkness. But the consummation of which he has just spoken indicates that the night will not last forever; indeed, in view of what Christ has done in bringing light and salvation it is far advanced.71 “The day has drawn near”72 does not mean that the parousia is imminent but that after Christ all history “must be of the nature of an epilogue” (Cranfield). Christ’s coming to save us is the decisive event.
It is because of this73 near approach of the day that Paul calls on his correspondents to put off the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. The verbs “put off” and “put on”74 are often used of clothing (see, e.g., Acts 7:58 for the former and Mark 15:20 for the latter), but Paul uses them often in metaphorical senses. Deeds (or “works”)75 is a word used in many combinations, such as “works of God”, “good works”, and “works of faith”. Here we must see that darkness is the natural habitat of evil, so that “works of darkness” are wicked works and as such are to be decisively “put off” by the believer. They are no part of his equipment. Instead he is to “put on”76 the equipment77 suitable for his life as a Christian (Denney comments, “the Christian’s life is not a sleep, but a battle”). Paul is fond of the metaphor of the Christian’s armor (2 Cor. 6:7; Eph. 6:13–17; 1 Thess. 5:8; perhaps Rom. 6:13). He does not consistently locate any particular Christian attribute with any one piece of armor and, for example, the breastplate is righteousness in Ephesians 6:14 and it is faith and love in 1 Thessalonians 5:8. It is the general idea that appeals to the apostle. It is interesting that here he speaks of putting off the “works” of darkness, but of putting on not the “works” of light, but its “armor”. That life is a battle was highly important to Paul.78
13. As79 in “the day” (RSV has daytime, but the word is identical with that in v. 12) starts the verse with an insistence that Christians belong with Christ, not with the powers of darkness. Accordingly they are exhorted to “walk becomingly” (NIV, behave decently). Paul often uses the metaphor of walking for the steady if unspectacular progress that should characterize the Christian. His use of the aorist imperative sets the direction of life rather than emphasizing continuity.80 Barclay renders “in loveliness of life”.81
Paul contrasts this way of life with the way acceptable to the world with a series of negatives arranged in three pairs, such that the members of each pair signify somewhat similar qualities. His first pair is not in orgies and drunkenness,82 pointing to the abuse of strong drink. Next comes a pair of sexual sins, sexual immorality83 and debauchery, this last denoting licentiousness, unrestrained lust. Both these words are plural, so again it would seem that Paul has in mind many examples of these vices. Both items of his third pair, dissension and jealousy, are in the singular, and point to attitudes of the spirit of man. Both indicate a determination to have one’s own way, a self-willed readiness to quarrel. All six of these vices stem from self-will; they are all the outreach of a determined selfishness that seeks only one’s own pleasure. As Barrett puts it, “All these practices constitute a failure in love, which ‘works no harm to the neighbour’ (v.10).” It is not without its interest that Paul is writing these words to “all in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints” (1:7). We should not think that first-century Christians came from the most upright and honorable sections of society (cf. 1 Cor. 6:9–11 with its “that is what some of you were”). Rather, the gospel took up and transformed many who were the dregs of society. Paul is mindful of this and warns against relapse.84
14. Rather85 introduces the contrary position. Clothe yourselves translates the verb rendered “put on” in verse 12;86 it signifies not that which is merely external but habitual association and identification with Christ. “Putting on Christ” is a strong and vivid metaphor. It means more than “put on the character of the Lord Jesus Christ”, signifying rather “Let Christ Jesus himself be the armor that you wear” (NEB). Wesley sees this as “a strong and beautiful expression for the most intimate union with Him, and being clothed with all the graces which were in Him.” There is a sense in which this takes place in baptism (Gal. 3:27; cf. Rom. 6:3). But it is necessary to put off the old and put on the new throughout the Christian life (cf. Eph. 4:22–24; Col. 3:12), and it is this of which Paul writes here.
KJV captures the sense of the rest of the verse with “make not provision87 for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof.” As often, Paul has the thought that the flesh all too easily leads to sin, and he counsels his readers to make no provision at all for the lower desires. Forman puts it somewhat colloquially: “Put into very simple English, Paul is saying: Do not plan for sin; give it no welcome; offer it no opportunity. Kick the sin off your doorstep and you won’t have it in the house.” Olshausen thinks that Paul writes “not to censure the care of the body as such, but only in the excess,” but this is probably reading something into the passage. Paul is not here concerned with the right way of using the body; he is warning against the wrong way. It is this that came home to Augustine in the most famous conversion associated with this passage. Augustine was a highly intellectual person, but found it completely impossible to break away from his sexual sins. But one day when he heard children at play calling out “Take up and read”, he took up a copy of Romans and his eye fell upon this passage. God used that to bring home to Augustine both the reality of his sin and the reality of salvation in Christ. It can do so still.