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XIII. x.
XIII. 1. ΠΑΣΑ Wuxh ἐξουσίαις ὑπερεχούσαις ὑποτασσέσθω.
695
> ou
- > > ”- γάρ ἐστιν ἐξουσία ei μὴ ἀπὸ] Θεοῦ" ai δὲ οὖσαι ἐξουσίαι ὑπὸ τού
Le. µη απο θεου D'F, Orig.
and all edd.
made to be the bringing down /of Divine judgment on him—which is not only absurd in itself, but in direct antagonism to the spirit of the passage.
Ver. 21. μὴ νικῶ: the absence of any connecting particle gives the last verse the character of a summary: in a word, be not overcome by evil. ὑπὸ τοῦ κακοῦ = by the evil your enemy inflicts. The Christian would be overcome by evil if it were able to compel him to avenge him- self by repaying it in kind. Wrong is not defeated but doubly victorious when it is repelled with its own weapons; we can only overcome it ἐν τῷ ἀγαθῷ through the good we do to our adversary, turning him so from an enemy into a friend. Vincit malos, says Seneca, pertinax bonitas : Wetst. accumulates similar ex- amples from classical writers. The év
in ἐν τῷ ἀγαθῷ is probably = Ὢ: it might
be explained as instrumental, or rendered “at the cost of”.
CHAPTER XIII. There is not a word to indicate how the transition is made from the discussion of the duties of Christians as members of one body, es- pecially the duties of humility and love in chap. xii., to the special subject which meets us in chap. xiii.— the duty of Christians in relation to the civil authorities. There is nothing exactly like vers. 1-7 elsewhere in Paul’s epistles, and it is difficult not to believe that he had some particular reason for treating the question here. The Christians in Rome, though mainly Gentile, as this epistle proves, were closely connected with the Jews, and the Jews were no- toriously bad subjects. Many of them held, on the ground of Deut. xvii. 15,
that_to acktiowledge a Gentile ruler
was itself sinful; and the spirit which prompted Pharisees to ask, Is it lawful to give tribute to Cesar or not? Shall we give or shall we not give? (Mark xii. 14) had no doubt its representatives in Rome also. As believers in the Messiah, “in another King, one Jesus” (Acts xvii. 7), even Christians of Gentile origin may have been open to the impulses of this same spirit ; and unbalanced minds, then
‘as in all ages, might be disposed to find
For απο WABDSLP read Όπο; and so all edd. εξονσιαι after ονσαι om. SAL D'F and all edd.
υπο του θεου; Om. του KIADFP
in the loyalty which was due to Christ alone, an emancipation from all subjec- tion to inferior powers. There is here an apparent point of contact between Chris- tianity and anarchism, and it may have- been the knowledge of some such move- ment of mind in the Church at Rome that made Paul write as he did. There is perhaps nothing in the passage which is not already given in our Lord’s word, “Render to Ceasar the things that are Cesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s”’; yet nothing can be more worthy of admiration than the soberness with which a Christian idealist like Paul lays down the Divine right of the state. The use made of the passage to prove the duty of ‘‘passive obedience,” or ‘the right divine of kings to govern wrong,” is beside the mark ; the Apostle was not thinking of such things at all. What is in his mind is that the organisation of human society, with its distinction of higher and lower ranks, is essential for the preservation of moral order, and therefore, one might add, for the exist- ence of the Kingdom of God itself; so that no Christian is at liberty to revolt against that organisation. The state is of God, and the Christian has to recog- nise its Divine right in the persons and. requirements in which it is presented to him: that is all. Whether in any- given case—say in England in 1642— the true representative of the State was to be found in the king or in the Com- mons, Paul, of course, does not enable us to say. Neither does he say any- thing bearing on the Divine right of insurrection. When he wrote, no doubt, Nero had not yet begun to rage against the Christians, and the imperial authori- ties had usually protected the Apostle himself against popular violence, whether Jewish or pagan; but even of this we must not suppose him to be taking any special account. He had, indeed, had other experiences (Acts xvi. 37, 2 Cor. xi. 25 Π.). But the whole discussion pre- supposes normal conditions: law and its representatives are of God, and as such are entitled to all honour and obedience from Christians.