LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 1998, Page 322

Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

⤓ Download .txt · copy text

322

THEOLOGICAL DOCUMENTS

beings that fed the yearning for a great king (the Messiah) who was to
come. In the face of so many dashed hopes and tragic experiences with
their kings, God’s people yearned for that “Wonderful Counselor, Mighty
God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace” who would reign “upon the
throne of David, and over his kingdom, to establish it, and to uphold it
with justice and with righteousness” (Is. 9:6~7).

When the exiles returned from captivity in Babylon after 70 years, the
hopes for a messianic king grew more intense. Yet even after the Mac-
cabees led a successful revolution against the Greeks in 163 B.C. (celebrat-
ed in the Jewish feast of Hanukkah), no descendant of King David ruled
over God's people. When the Romans conquered Palestine and the Jewish
people were forced to submit to their harsh rule, messianic expectations
reached a feverish pitch.

And so # was that the Messiah, when He came, found Himself
embroiled in dangerous political conflict. Our Lord Jesus Christ was the
Davidic messianic king; yet, the Romans controlled Palestine and had
installed their own puppet king, Herod. What would Jesus do? A few of
Jesus’ disciples were political revolutionaries and many of Jesus’ enemies
feared that Jesus would lead an ill-fated political revolution (John
11:47-48). Eventually, Jesus would be executed as a political revolutionary
(Mark 15:26 records the posted charge of treason against him: “the King of
the Jews”), in spite of the fact that the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate,
knew Jesus to be innocent of that charge (Luke 23:13-14).

But why should the Messiah be innocent of such a charge? The people,
after all, expected their “messiah” to be a powerful deliverer like Moses,
who had led Israel out from Egypt. They expected a great king like David,
who had established Jerusalem as his capital city through military force.
They expected a conqueror like Judas Maccabeus, who had entered
Jerusalem triumphantly to the shouts of “Hosanna!” and the waving of
palm branches (1 Macc. 13:51). So, why did Jesus not lead a political revo-
jution against the Romans—a hated, idolatrous government—in order to
establish God's kingdom on earth? Why should Jesus not have become the
“military messiah” that so many Jews expected?

We now can see clearly that Jesus came to die—the very Lamb of God
who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29; 3:14-17). But there is more.
Jesus also redefined popular expectations regarding the messianic kingdom:

See Richard A. Horsey with John S. Hanson, Bandits, Prophets, ant’ Messiahs: Popular
Movements at the Time of Jesus (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1985); “Study of Jewish social
banditry may shed some light on the way in which Jesus was arrested (as if a brigand, Mark
14:48) and on the crucifixion scene, in which Jesus was crucified with two brigands. ... More
importantly, the occurrence of banditry illustrates the disintegrating socal conditions in
which Jesus’ words and actions would have found a resonant response” (256).

9

to a dangerous “trick question” about paying taxes to Caesar, Jesus not
only calied for submission to God by everyone created in God's image
(including Caesar), He also explicitly endorsed the payment of Roman
taxes by those engaged in Roman commerce: “Render therefore to Caesar
the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's” (Matt.
22:21).

For the New Testament, then, the church is a kingdom and its king
exercises real power. Therefore, even when early Christians met the same
fate as their Lord, it was with our Lord’s own confidence that God was
still in control John 19:11; Luke 23:46; Acts 7:55-60). Nevertheless, in this
New Testament understanding of the church as Christ's kingdom, the
Christian’s relationship to civil governments has a fundamental ambiva-
lence. On the one hand, even a pagan civil government is God's servant
and should be respected (see, e.g., Rom. 13:1-7 and Matt. 22:15-22). On
the other hand, there are always clear limits to obedience, for Christians
must “obey God rather than men” (Acts 4:18-20 and 5:27~29) whenever it
is impossible to do both.

There is tension, sometimes even paradox, in this New Testament
understanding of the relationship between God and Caesar. It means that
the basic Christian attitude toward ail civil government should be positive
(since God uses civil government to restrain evil and promote the common
good), even though there are inevitably times when Christians must obey
God rather than earthly government. It also means that spiritual authority
must be distinguished clearly from temporal authority, even though they
are both under the sovereignty of God. There is a carefully balanced ten-
sion here that, as we shall see, has been very difficult for the church to pre-
serve.

™ Martin H. Scharlemann writes in his “Scriptural Concepts of the Church and the
State,” in Church and State under God, ed. Albert G. Huegli (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing
House, 1964), 30: “There is nowhere in the words and works of Jesus even the shadow of a
suggestion that the state and its authority were institutions He proposed to ignore or to
escape. On the contrary, before Pilate He recognized the claims of political authority over
Him as a subject of Reme, although He had to remind the Roman procurator that he exer-
cised a power that did not basically derive from his positwn as a Roman official but from
God's will.”

11

Pilate entered the praetorium again and called Jesus, and said to him,
“Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus answered, “Do you say this of your
own accord, or did others say it to you about me?” Pilate answered, “Am
la Jew? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to
me; what have you done?” Jesus answered, “My kingship is not of this
world; if my kingship were of this world, my servants would fight, that I
might not be handed over to the Jews; but my kingship is not from the
world.” Pilate said to him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say
that fam a king. For this I was born, and for this I have come into the
world, to bear witness to the truth. Every one who is of the (ruth hears my
voice.” John 18:33-37)

The New Testament proclaims to us that the crucified and risen Jesus is
indeed a king: “He [God] has delivered us from the dominion of darkness
and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have
redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Col. 1:13-14). However, the New
Testament teaches that Jesus reigns through the power of the Holy Spirit
in the baptizing and teaching of His church:

And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth

has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, bap-

tizing therm in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spir-

it, teaching them to observe all that | have commanded you; and Jo, ! am

with you always, to the close of the age.” (Matt. 28:18-20)

Thus, the rule of King Jesus is spiritual and not temporal.

The relationship between divine and human authority for God's peo-
ple is, therefore, much more sophisticated in the New Testament than in
the Old. By refusing merely to reconstitute the Old Testament rule of God
over His people through an earthly king, Jesus demonstrated, first of all,
that His kingdom is more universal than any earthly kingdom. The king-
dom of our Lord Jesus is open to Jew and Gentile alike through faith. Sec-
ond, Jesus demonstrated that the Old Testament kingdom was only a
shadow of the reality that is found in His church (Col. 2:15-17). Thus, the
Apostle Peter takes the language used by God at Mount Sinai regarding
Old Testament Israel (Ex. 19:5-6) and applies it to the New Testament
church: “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's
own people” (1 Peter 2:9). Third, Jesus also demonstrated that the greatest
power is not temporal force but the power of the Gospel and of faith.
Against such power, all defenses give way: “On this rock I will build my
church, and the powers of death shail not prevail against it” (Matt. 16:18).

Finally, Jesus demonstrated that even a pagan state deserves respect
for its God-given role in preserving and enhancing human life. In response

B. The Church:
From Persecuted to Persecuting

The early church lived in a hostile environment where, in spite of a
desire to live in peace and harmony with the Roman authorities, Christians
were subject to periodic and sometimes intense persecutions. This
occurred despite the fact that, in theory (and with one significant qualifi-
cation, also in practice), the Romans exercised religious toleration:

The policy of the emperors and the senate, so far as it concerned reli-
gion, was happily seconded by the reflections of the enlightened, and by
the habits of the supersttious, part of their subjects. The various modes of
worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the
people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the
magistrate, as equally useful. And thus toleration produced not only
mutual indulgence, but even religious concord.’

Yet this apparent toleration masked a mandatory demonstration of Cae-
sar’s de facto sovereignty. The essentially “divine” role sometimes played
by the Roman Caesar was, in effect, as the ultimate authority for life in this
world. One could believe nearly anything, so long as one submitted to the
temporal sovereignty of the Roman emperor.
The Roman authorities were fundamentally tolerant in religious mat-

ters. Every people of the empire could have its own beliefs, and every ind

vidual could strive for salvation in his own way. No religious community

was suppressed so long as it fell in with public order. Only the worship of

the emperor was obligatory on all, for it was grounded on imperial law,

and the Roman authorities permitted no laxity in matters of law. The wor-

ship of the emperor was therefore not fundamentally a matter of belief, but

one of order and discipline.”?

Unfortunately, this seemingly minimal ritual amounted to deification of the
civil government and was to the Christian, therefore, simply idolatrous.
While early Christians had no desire to upset the civil order (observing
the dictates of Rom. 13:1~-7), they simply could not submit to the emperor
in this way. First of all, no Chnistian can acknowledge that all religions are

” Gibbon, 25-26. Cf. “Christanity and the Roman Government” (ch. 10) in A History of
the Christian Church, 4th ed., ed. Withston Walter et al. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons,
1985),

" Stauffer, 210. R. J. Rushdoony, writing in The Politics of Guilt and Pity (Fairfax, VA:
Thoburn Press, 1978; 304-5), agrees: “The empire was ready to grant ‘religious freedom’ to
the church provided the church recognized the right of the state to grant that freedom, which
meant a recognition of the state as the principle of order. ... All religions and all gods could
have their place in Rome. as long as the Roman state and its emperor were recognized as the
Ink between the human and the divine orders.”

12