CRITICAL NOTES
Romans 13:8.—Augustine says that “love is a debt which is multiplied by paying.” Milton says, “By owing owes not, but still pays, at once indebted and discharged.” The debt of love can never be fully discharged.
Romans 13:9.—Love to God and love to man said by the Jews to be the great sum or heads of the law.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Romans 13:7-10
Christian citizenship and Christian brotherhood.—Compare the text with the life and precepts of Jesus. They are entire harmony. He was subject unto His parents. His precept as to Christian citizenship was, “Render unto Cæsar,” etc.
I. The need for this injunction to early Christians.—False charges levelled against them: one was disloyalty. Paul set forth the duties of Christian citizenship. There was the added injunction, Be good to neighbours, loving all men. It was necessary to publish the fact that Christians aimed, not at the overthrow of governments, but to show sincerest loyalty and brotherly kindness. In one sense appearances were against Christians. Their mysterious meetings lent colour to the charges of conspiracy—false and wicked charges; for the whole tenor of Christ’s doctrine, and Christian practice too, was: tolerate no violence; live at peace; do not retaliate; be magnanimous. Of course Christianity was opposed to the way of the world, and libellous charges gave excuse for persecution.
II. The text deals with Christian citizenship.—It asserts the principle of submission to civil authority. Four thoughts suggested:
1. It is impossible to secure successful action apart from organisation. Union is strength, and orderly unity is strength at its best. Confusion in council leads to internal anarchy and contempt from other powers.
2. The avowed object of all government to put down the wrong and enforce the right. Crime, the citizen’s enemy; and the government deals it deadly blows. This an unanswerable argument for Christian obedience to the state.
3. It is admitted that “by means of society not only is the race preserved, but civilisation is developed.” Therefore maintain government.
4. The only basis of commercial enterprise is a thoroughly substantial government. Political crises influence the trade of a country. When Philip II. of Spain pursued his suicidal policy in the Netherlands, merchants transferred their workshops to England.
III. Here also we have the principle of Christian brotherhood.—
1. We are to render to the individual his or her due. What men’s dues are is measured by the fact that Christianity has taught men to consider each man a brother.
2. The worldly usage is that the great are honoured at the expense of the more humble. This is anti-Christian.
3. The spirit of forbearance is exhibited in the text. A disgrace to professors of religion is the habit of fault-finding, the lack of a charitable spirit. If we want to be Christlike, we shall not repay people’s faults and forget their excellences. “When a leaf drops and dies, it goes down to mingle with the ground. When moss falls off, it disappears. Everything in nature, as it decays, hides itself.” And so it should be in human life.
4. God’s attitude that of forgetfulness of our faults. Love has sat on heaven’s throne rather than judgment. And so it comes to pass that “the base of this low altar-stair of suffering slopes through darkness up to the everlasting heavens, and far, far within their piercing deeps love is enthroned for ever.” Cannot man learn of his God? Even the dying Christ thought first of the pardon of His murderers: “Father, forgive them.” Let every man strive in his human degree to traverse the divine range of sympathy. It is not so much doctrine or creed that we want, as that Christlike spirit of love that will enable us to love God and also man—the spirit that will enable us to overcome every obstacle, and, like the Master, “bear one another’s burdens.”—Albert Lee.
Romans 13:7. Legal and moral dues.—It has been sometimes objected that preachers put too much of the gospel into their sermons, and do not speak sufficiently of the every-day duties of life. St. Paul binds himself to the gospel, and so must his followers. But we shall not understand the gospel aright if we do not bear in mind the fact that it is to teach men to be good citizens of earth as well as of heaven. Christianity leaves no part of the nature, and no portion of society untouched; it speaks to rulers and ruled, to kings and subjects, to parents and their children. The New Testament lays down general laws by which men are to be guided in the affairs of life. The best all-round man is the one who makes a sensible application of those laws in the management of his earthly affairs. We are to bring heaven down to earth, and thus make it more blessed.
I. Christianity teaches classification.—There is method observable in the material universe: lower and higher forms of life—vegetable life, animal life, and intellectual life. Creation culminates in man, and in the human animal there are differences—some excel in strength and others in wisdom. God has set men in societies where there are differences; He instituted the family, which is the germ and type of all true human societies. As there are differences in the family, so will there be differences in the clan, the tribe, the nation: the rich and the poor dwell together. Where the right spirit reigns all will work together so as to make the commonwealth strong, healthy, and happy: the king will be the true father of his subjects, and they will be his faithful children.
II. Christianity inculcates discrimination.—It differentiates between the powers. There are higher powers and lower powers, and those who have little or no power. It seems to point out that all have their dues. Tribute is the due of one power, custom of another, fear of a third, and honour of a fourth. Shall we go far wrong if we say that honour is due to all who have not rendered themselves vile, ignoble, and utterly dishonourable? Thus there is not only the material due, the money payment, but there are intellectual or moral dues, the payment of fear and honour. Enough has not been done when the taxes are paid. There is the emotional tribute. We are not only to uphold the throne and constitution, not only to obey our country’s laws, not only to respect the magistrates and judges of the land, but to give to all men their dues. Each man has his rights, which must be respected. Shall we render to all their dues if we rob God? The man who robs God would rob his fellow, providing a safe opportunity were presented. What is due from the creature to the Creator? Thankfulness at least is due. Cicero said that thankfulness is the mother of all virtues. Even the very heathen said that all evil is spoken in this one word—viz., “unthankfulness.” Gratitude is God’s due for His wisdom and power in creation, for His mercy in preservation, for His love and grace in redemption. Life is due to Him who gave His life. Love is due to Him who poured out an infinite wealth of love upon the world. Let us live our thanks. Let our lives be made fragrant and beautiful by the influence of grateful hearts.
III. Christianity proclaims responsibility.—Some one said, “It is a solemn thing to die,” which was met by the reply, “It is a solemn thing to live.” Surely a solemn thing to live, for none of us can live to ourselves. We are debtors, whether we like it or not, to our fellows. A self-contained, self-included life is impossible. The hermit in his cave, the naturalist in his hut, the monk in his cell, cannot completely shut themselves out from their fellows. And in the present complex state of society we may well be startled as we think of the responsibilities of life. How vast the debt we owe to our fellow-creatures! How much larger the debt we owe to God and to Jesus Christ! How much is due to Jesus Christ, who has done more to shape human destinies into divine forms, to bless the world, to beautify existence, than all the monarchs, statesmen, warriors, philosophers, and moralists of time! Our debt to Jesus Christ is so great that had we a thousand lives to give they would not be adequate to discharge the claim. And yet He asks no more than each is able to give. He asks thy love, thy life, thy all. Give thy life to Jesus, and He will so ennoble the offering that it will be no longer poor. Give thy love to Jesus, and He will increase it so that it will become like a live coal within thee from God’s altar, and thy nature will be all aglow with the celestial flame. If thus we love Jesus, we shall learn to love our fellows more, and we shall learn from Jesus to render to all their dues. How kind, gentle, and considerate He was to all men and women! He paid to the higher powers the tax which was required. He paid to the lower orders help and sympathy. He paid the tax of tears where tears were due; He paid the tax of sorrowful lamentations where woe was impending; He paid the tax of a sacrificed life upon the altar erected by human need and divine requirement. In the light of His large life we shall learn to take a complete view of the words, “Render to all their dues.” A holy life is due to infinite goodness, to human wretchedness, to God, to angels, and to men, to others and to ourselves. We should all strive so to live that others may take knowledge of us that we have been with Jesus, as some did of the early believers. Helpful is the thought that Jesus is no hard taskmaster. He notices the right intention; He approves the pure motive and the earnest purpose. Let us go forward seeking to render to all their dues.
Romans 13:10. The last analysis.—The first golden stair is this: we ask, What is the origin of love? Christianity answers, Love is of God. Hatred, then, is not of God; it is of the devil. Selfishness, jealousy, envy, all that spoils the gentle and the perfect life in us—heedlessness of others, forgetfulness of the wishes and the hopes of. others, the egoism which ignores others, to say nothing of the sarcastic tongue which delights to inflict pain, or the vanity which will sacrifice a reputation for a stroke of wit, or the ambition which bustles all weaker folk aside that it may reach its own coveted goal—all this is not of God. The original impress of God upon this world was an impress of love There was a time when gentleness, tenderness, considerateness, stamped the whole creation. Wherever you find these qualities still, they are of God; something saved out of the wreck of man, fair stretches of green landscape not submerged beneath the flood of evil, or else recovered from it. God is love, and love is of God. “Every one that loveth is born of God.” It follows, then, that there is a second golden stair which we may climb. “Love is of God”—that is the first stair. The second is Love in morality. “Love,” says the apostle Paul, “is the fulfilling of the law.” Let us pause again, and ask, “What then is law?” Law is a series of instructions and restraints to make us like God. It begins at the very lowest level of things, and tells us not to steal, not to covet, not to lie, and not to murder. But these crimes and vices are not so much causes as effects. And you may take the commandments one by one, and apply this test to them, and you will see at once that they would not have been needed if only men had loved one another. Get love then, and you cannot help keeping the law. Get love, and you cannot help being moral. It may seem but a scanty equipment to produce perfection, and so the seven notes of music may seem to be a scanty equipment to produce the heaven-born melodies of a Handel or Beethoven. But see how they use them—of what infinite and glorious combinations are they capable! So it is with this supreme quality of love. It is capable of all but infinite combinations and interpretations; it utters the grand music of heroism and the soft lute music of courtesy; it is patriotism, altruism, martyrdom; it stoops to the smallest things of life and governs the greatest; it controls the temper and regulates the reason; it extirpates the worst qualities and refines the best. Go one step further. Love is of God; love is morality; now you find that love is religion also. “Every one that loveth is born of God.” How often do we find in the communion of other Churches men who surprise us by the spirituality and the saintliness of their lives! We hold such Churches, perhaps, to be in error; but where love reigns there is morality. And then take one more golden stair. Love is of God; love is morality; love is religion; lastly, love is life, love is immortality. “Every one that loveth is born of God”—born into a larger life. We sometimes permit ourselves to debate whether life is not more than love. There are times when we are impressed with the spaciousness of this life of ours, when we suddenly realise the joys of living, and are athirst to drink a full draught of life. We want to know everything, we want to understand everything; we would fain mix in the most crowded places of life, and feel the pulsations of the tide of humanity, and move amid its swiftest currents; and in such an hour we ask ourselves, What is love? Surely it is nothing more than a mere episode in the great drama, one of the many fruits of life—perhaps the choicest, but that is all. For when that passion of mere living possesses us it eclipses all other passions, and then we turn away from love because we see that it is a yoke, because we believe it to be a renunciation of the fulness of personal life, because it is the subjugation of our nature to the exigencies and the needs of another nature. The man and woman who do this usually live to learn that love, after all, is the one thing worth living for, and they often know what it is to sit amidst the ruins of life in a friendless old age, amidst gains and gauds that have lost their charm, and to long with inexpressible yearning for one drop of that cup which they once so contemptuously rejected. For the truth is that love is life; it is the only true and eternal life; it is the birth of a man’s soul into a higher state of being. There, then, as I have said, is the last analysis of Christianity, and I pray you to accept it. Like all profound things, it is really simple; it is in fact so simple that men doubt whether it can be true. Men cannot make themselves believe and understand that Christianity is merely love, that a great church is simply the temple of love, that what all this elaborate organisation of worship and preaching aims at is this—to teach men to love God, to love each other. And so I rejoice. I see a world that is not outcast, not wholly evil, and not forsaken, for love works in it still, and God is love, and love is everywhere. Like a great bell of hope, mellow, ceaseless, glorious in its music, the words of John ring across the world, “Every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.”—W. G. Dawson.
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON Romans 13:7-10
Custom.—There is some difficulty about the distinctive signification of φόρος (tribute) and τέλος (custom). By some the former is regarded as a tax upon land; by others, as upon property generally, whether movable or immovable. Those critics who give to φόρος the wider signification limit τέλος to a capitation tax; and those who confine φόρος to a tax upon land give τέλος a larger meaning, as signifying a tax upon merchandise as well as upon persons. Judging from the apostle’s use of the word, φόρος was the general term for all contributions, and was used in the same sense that the word “taxes” is largely used; and in its limited sense it applies to all burdens upon landed or personal property; while τέλος was the capitation tax which our Lord told Peter to pay for himself and his Lord.—Knight.
“Honour to whom honour.”—Christians are not to neglect the laws of social life, or overlook the fact that distinction of rank is highly necessary for the economy and safety of the world. This precept especially claims our thoughtful attention in an age when an increase of knowledge, prosperity, and political freedom has removed many of the material props upon which the influence of parents and masters and those placed over us formerly rested. We might, with advantage, take a useful hint from the Lacedæmonians, who laid such stress on the training of their youth to give honour to whom honour was due.—Neil.
Christian brotherhood.—Love will not permit us to injure, oppress, or offend our brother; it will not give us leave to neglect our betters or despise our inferiors. It will restrain every inordinate passion, and not suffer us to gratify our envy at the expense of our neighbour’s credit and reputation; but it will preserve us harmless and innocent.—Sherlock.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 13
Romans 13:9-10. Love to God fulfils the law.—An orphan boy of peculiar vivacity and uncommon talents, and who had been a favourite comic performer in the heathen sports, was sent by his relations to New Herrnhut, a settlement of the Moravian missionaries. His agreeable and engaging manners gained him the affection of one of the wealthiest Greenlanders, in whose family he was placed, who had no son, and whose presumptive heir he was. At the first catechetical meeting at which he was present, being asked whether he would wish to be acquainted with our Saviour and be converted, “Oh yes!” replied he gaily; “I shall soon be converted”; on which another, who had been lately baptised, gravely told him he knew little what conversion meant—that it was to yield the heart wholly to our Saviour, and to make a surrender of every evil inclination. This he found a hard saying, and would rather have thrown up his prospects among the brethren, and returned to his amusements among the heathen; till, after considerable mental conflict, he at last ceased contending with his Maker, and yielded a willing and cheerful obedience.
Romans 13:10. Doddridge’s child.—Doddridge buried a most interesting child at nine years of age. The dear little creature was a general favourite; and he tells us in his funeral sermon that when he one day asked her how it was that everybody loved her, “I know not,” she said, “unless it be that I love everybody.” Tell your children this. Also read to them, “The child Samuel grew on, and was in favour both with the Lord and also with men.”
Romans 13:10. Five people supported on a needle’s point.—There was a student once who asked Robertson of Irvine the old scholastic quibble, whether he could tell how many souls could be supported on the point of a needle. “Oh! dear me, yes,” said he; “that is easy enough. I can tell that.” “How so?” said the student. “Well,” said Robertson, “as I was walking home the other night along the seashore, I passed a house where a poor widow lives; her husband was drowned at sea last winter. She has five little children, and as I looked through the window I saw in the firelight two little golden heads in the bed yonder, and another little golden head in the cradle, and two other children sitting at the mother’s knee. She was working away with her needle, and it was flashing in the firelight, and was going as hard as it could go. So,” continued Robertson, “I know how many souls can be supported on the point of a needle—five: don’t you see?” And as I look through that window I seem to look upon the whole vision of domestic life, on mothers toiling and never calling it toil, on the vision of innumerable women all the world over who give themselves away, and are not so much as thanked for it, on the silent heroisms which redeem life, and which are its unuttered poetry, its saving salt, its divine attestation. And these heroisms, which are the birth of love, are everywhere.—Dawson.