Love Your Neighbors

Living in Covenant

A Heart-felt Covenant

Live in the light of God (Isaiah 2:5) 

Jesus Teaches about Transforming Love

Romans 13:1-10 The Message

To Be a Responsible Citizen

13 1-3 Be a good citizen. All governments are under God. Insofar as there ispeace and order, it’s God’s order. So live responsibly as a citizen. If you’re irresponsible to the state, then you’re irresponsible with God, and God will hold you responsible. Duly constituted authorities are only a threat if you’re trying to get by with something. Decent citizens should have nothing to fear.
3-5 Do you want to be on good terms with the government? Be a responsible citizen and you’ll get on just fine, the government working to your advantage. But if you’re breaking the rules right and left, watch out. The police aren’t there just to be admired in their uniforms. God also has an interest in keeping order, and he uses them to do it. That’s why you must live responsibly—not just to avoid punishment but also because it’s the right way to live.
6-7 That’s also why you pay taxes—so that an orderly way of life can be maintained. Fulfill your obligations as a citizen. Pay your taxes, pay your bills, respect your leaders.
8-10 Don’t run up debts, except for the huge debt of love you owe each other. When you love others, you complete what the law has been after all along. The law code—don’t sleep with another person’s spouse, don’t take someone’s life, don’t take what isn’t yours, don’t always be wanting what you don’t have, and any other “don’t” you can think of—finally adds up to this: Love other people as well as you do yourself. You can’t go wrong when you love others. When you add up everything in the law code, the sum total is love.

 

For Reflection

Governments, for good or bad, establish order.  Here Paul may have been reacting to the notion that because one follows Jesus and holds God as the supreme ruler, one has no obligation the secular order. Remember the Jews did not separate the dominion of civil law and the religion they practiced. Jesus refused to adjudicate civil disputes. That is what civil law is to do. Jesus did not establish a new theocracy. Instead, Jesus established a spiritual foundation for the relationships among people and God, a relationship based on love.

 It is right, though, to challenge those civil practices which require the violation of justice. When the laws interfered with the rights of conscience or commanded the worship of idols, non-violent resistance to be subordinated to unjust civil law and ruthless governments has always been a Christian prerogative.

Pray

Pray often and long so that you remember express love even in times of resistance when civil order requires immoral or unjust action of you.