Christian Citizenship
CHRISTIAN CITIZENSHIP
ROMANS 13:1-5
Paul urges respect for the authorities.
It is important to see Christian society in the first century in proper perspective. The Roman empire, running to the Rhine, the Danube, and the Black Sea, and bounded to the west by the Atlantic, and to the south and east by the great deserts, had given the Mediterranean world a stable peace. The Roman Peace was the social and political framework within which the Christian church reached its first international form.
Roman history, written from the standpoint of the aristocratic writers of the capital, inevitably concentrated on Rome itself, on the vices and doings of the court and the prince, ignoring the proletariat, and the provinces. It is historic fact that, during the rule of the youthful Nero, whose vice and profligacy became legendary, the provinces enjoyed such quietness and stability that “Nero’s Five Years” became legendary for just administration throughout the Roman world.
Paul had learned in Gallio’s court, and he was to learn again in Jerusalem, that Roman discipline and justice, though it was sometimes rough, and though it could be corrupt in such vicious hands as those of Felix, was a protection and a shield. Moreover, the Jews were restless throughout the world. The mood of the empire’s most difficult people was warming up towards the Jewish revolt of AD 66, and that event had worldwide repercussions. As Paul found when trying to travel from Corinth to Jerusalem, and again in Jerusalem itself, a collaborating Jew such as he, with his assumption of Roman citizenship, was in acute danger.
He was also hopeful that the fabric of the empire could be Christianized, and he did not wish the church to become branded as a dissident, rebellious group. A decade later Rome drove the church into this position, but hope of partnership still lived when Paul was writing. The empire, too, was sensitive about organizations within its body. That is the background to these words, repeated in 1 Timothy 2:1f. and Titus 3:1, and echoed in 1 Peter 3:13-17.
Paul’s own growing awareness of the power and usefulness of the empire in his program of evangelism may be traced in Acts. It was first formed in Cyprus, reached a climax in Philippi, and may be illustrated from Corinth, Ephesus and Jerusalem.