This is the text of the sermon on Romans 13:1-7 delivered by Bishop Robert Forsyth to the judiciary at Sydney’s Law Term Address in St Andrew’s Cathedral.
Ministers of God
Greetings fellow "minsters of God'!
That's what you all are, according to the Christian faith.
Ministers of God.
Whether you know it or like it or not. "Ministers of God.'
I am bold to say this because that is what the apostle Paul calls you.
Three times in his letter to the Romans chapter 13.
The Apostle is writing to Christians in Rome from his base Corinth sometime in late 50s of the first century.
He is at the point of his letter where he is addressing what should be the attitude of the fledgling Christian community to the outside world.
After dealing with more general issues the Apostle turns in particular to what he calls "governing authorities'
In his day, "governing authorities' would be referring to the local officials working on behalf of the Roman empire, the soldiers, the magistrates, governors generals prefects, elected public officials, the local kings and petty leaders and at the top of the administrative and governmental and legal system, the emperor himself.
Today, in our society it would be a similar wide range of people and responsibilities, and it would definitely include all of you.
Officers and judges of the courts.
And how does Paul say the Christians respond should to them?
13.1 Let every person be subject to the governing authorities.
In the process of the argument he three times calls these governing authorities "ministers of God'. In Romans 13.4, twice.
The reader is not to fear the authority but instead do good "For he is the minister of God to thee for good.'
If the reader does wrong they should be afraid because, the authority, in executing God's judgment "is the minister of God'
And in 13.6 even on the matter of taxation the same point is made:
"For this cause pay ye tribute also: for they are God's ministers attending continually upon this very thing..'
That is the King James version of 1611. More modern translations have the translation "servant of God.':
For the same reason you also pay taxes, for the authorities are God's servants, busy with this very thing
But the point is still the same. Paul's uses two words of the "governing authorities" that elsewhere are used of what we more normally think of as God's ministers, including the apostle himself.
äéÜêïÃüò = attendant, servant, deacon
ëåéôïõñãïr = public servant, doer ofpublic works as religious dutiy (Modern word litugy comes from)
So then "ministers of God', or "servants of God' it is. That's what we are. In different ways.
But why? Why does the Apostle so designate the governing authorities, as minsters of God?
In many ways this is unexpected and odd. Unexpected and odd for three reasons:
1. The Apostle may designate the governing authorities as minsters of God but it is not because were Christians or believers. Far from it.
In mid 50s AD the Christian faith would have been virtually unknown in most parts of the Empire. Despite the existence of such early converts as Cornelius a Roman Centurion of the Italian Cohort in Palestine, hardly any of magistrates, officials and judges and soldiers would be Christians. Not many of the Emperor Nero's administration.
The Apostle may have designated them minsters of God, but he is far from thinking that even know the one true and living God whose minister they were. They are among those who worship what Paul in another place called "beings that by nature are not gods'.
2.The Apostle may designate the governing authorities as minsters of God but it is not because the governing authorities were introducing some kind of special Christian law, a Christian sharia. No hint of that, nor any exhortation to the governing authorities on what program to implement. They were simply ruling according to the customs, insights and practises of their situation. Paul is basically positive as the justice of these pagans who are nevertheless unwittingly God's servants. Listen to Romans 13.3-4
3 [" ] rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Do you wish to have no fear of the authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive its approval; 4 for it is God's servant for your good. But if you do what is wrong, you should be afraid, for the authority does not bear the sword in vain! It is the servant of God to execute wrath on the wrongdoer.
In view of the particular nature of this congregation this morning it is interesting that as Oliver ODonervan reminds us, in this Pauline model the defining role of secular government is to exercise judgment. In this case, the court is the central paradigm of government"”all government, in all its branches. Minsters of God, but not because of any particular Christian program. It is even more unexpected and odd than that…
3. Those whom the Apostle designates as minsters of God were not simply not Christian, or not enforcing Christian law, but actively held a view of themselves and their place that was contrary to the truth of the Gospel. The ideology and view of itself that Roman governing authorities possessed would soon in a decade lead to a tragic clash of imperial power and Christian conviction.
It is sobering to realise that many of the very readers of this letter which Paul written to them in the early stages of the emperor Nero would by the end of his reign suffer terribly in an anti Christian pogrom. And centuries of conflict were to follow. Why? Because of the claims of Roman governing authorities to an exclusive divine authorisation. As Rowan Williams has put it in a recent lecture,
"Civic Roman religion assumed that the true unit of sacred reality was the empire itself, with its public rituals and the unifying practice of venerating the divine power of the emperor'.
No place for a group, however loyal and law abiding, like the Christians, who would not pay cultic honour to the emperor's divine power. The Christian faith directly challenged this claim.
Its "gospel' (itself a word used in the imperial cult) was that the crucified man Jesus had been raised from the dead and that he was lord and saviour. Here is the challenge to the claim of the emperor as lord and saviour.
It is not entirely beside the point that one of the earliest accusations of the Christians was that they were (in the words of their Thessalonian opponents as recorded in the Acts of the Apostles) "acting contrary to the decrees of the emperor, saying that there is another king named Jesus'
Surprising that given this background, that the apostle still urges those who know that Jesus is Lord to "be subject to the governing authorities' and accords them the significant designation as the ministers of God.
Yes it is unexpected and odd. Which raises the question more pointedly Why? How can he make that move?
The answer is Providence.
Providence.
The comforting and disturbing conviction that the true God, the god who had created the heavens and the earth, who had raised Jesus from the dead was continually ordering human affairs, even over humans that knew little of him. So the governing authorities are part of the many good things God has providentially ordered. Hear the opening words of Paul's statement here in Romans 13:
1 Let every person be subject to the governing authorities;
for there is no authority except from God,
and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God.
2 Therefore whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed . . .
This is not an idiosyncratic idea of Paul. His words echo those of Jesus to the Roman governor Pilate on the morning of the crucifixion:
You would have no power over me unless it had been given you from above;
This is a comforting and disturbing teaching. Comforting that God is working for our good in the midst of our human institutions and struggles, disturbing in that it suggests we are no where nearly the masters of our destiny as we like to think.
Well, my fellow ministers of God, what is there for you from this teaching?
1. Paul's words written to the subjects of the governing authorities, not to the governing authorities themselves. We are also in that category whoever we are "Be you ever so high, the law is higher than you' And so the first word we hear is about our own respect for the governing authorities in our lives, not out of mere fear of judgment but for conscience "for it is God's servant for your good.'
2. The secular world and activity is affirmed in this teaching. I am using the word secular not as meaning "without God', in its more precise and old meaning "of this time' that is "of this age', not the age to come. The secular in this sense is not without God. You who work in the law work in a secular work. But you serve God for all that. Even if you would rather say that you "serve the community' or "serve people' you serve God in that as well.
3. This is a call for humility and, may I even say, fear. When we say that the governing authorities are the minister of God this means that we meet the law we do not just face our own alienated wills. But something beyond that. The social contract theory or myth is inadequate. By what authority does the law rule, does it compel? It is not the human will of the one man or woman the judge. Nor is it simply the will of the many, as if numbers gave the authority. Lawful authority carries the divine authority behind it. That is not a doctrine of the divine right of judges and law officers and legislators and police. No return to King Charles 1.
I don't have to tell you that the law is oh so human. It is a human construction. And it is so imperfect. And that lawyers are so human too. But the humanity of the law is not to take from it divine purpose.
I do not want to make a comment one way or another on the issue of an Australian republic when I point out that one aspect of the symbolism of our present system of constitutional monarchy well expresses this Biblical understanding of the governing authorities. In that the symbolic head of state holds office explicitly by divine providence rather than the will of the people, it is a system which explicitly says that authority is from God not just from ourselves.
And in that the actual exercise of power remains in the hands of those responsible to the electorate and the laws and not the sovereign, the dangers of despotism inherent in any "God given right to rule' are avoided.
However, whether we have a human monarchy or a human republic the reality behind either is the same. Whatever we think of having a "Mate for the Head of State,' our the authority of our laws are never just "mates rates'. This is why I say that this truth is a call for humility and even fear. Humility before the awesome responsibility you have.
One of the values of the ceremonial and special dress of our courts is that they express reverence, that "forgotten virtue' of awe for what is above us without which the exercise of power that you have would be become dangerous personal arrogance. These things are not to make you a bigger person than you are but a littler person before that which is bigger than you.
Humility and fear? Yes ministers of another are accountable. The gospel announces that humanity will face judgment by the crucified man Jesus Christ, the day when, according to my gospel, God, through Jesus Christ, will judge the secret thoughts of all. "Be you never so high".
So my fellow ministers, serve him with humility and fear.
