Daily Devotion

Peter looks at the duty of the Christian within the different spheres of his life. He begins with his duty as a citizen of the country in which he lives. The instruction of the New Testament is that the Christian must be a good and useful citizen of the country in which his life is set.

 

It has been said that fear built the cities and that men huddled behind a wall to be safe. Men join themselves together and agree to live under certain laws so that the good man may have peace to do his work and go about his business and the evil man may be restrained and kept from his evil-doing. According to the New Testament, life is meant by God to be an ordered business, and the state is divinely appointed to provide and maintain that order.

The New Testament view is perfectly logical and just. It holds that a man cannot accept the privileges that the state provides without also accepting the responsibilities and the duties that it demands. He cannot in honor and decency take everything and give nothing.

 

How are we to translate this into modern terms? There is a fundamental difference between the state in New Testament times and the state and time as we know it. In the New Testament ties, the state was authoritarian.  The ruler was an absolute ruler, and the sole duty of the citizen was to render absolute obedience and to pay taxes (Romans 13:6-7). Under these conditions, the keynote was bound to be in subjection to the state. But we in America live in a democracy something far more than unquestioning subjection becomes necessary. The Government is not only of the people; it is also for the people and by the people. The demand in the New Testament states that Christians should fulfill their responsibility to the state. In the authoritarian state, that consisted solely in submission. But what is that obligation in the very different circumstances of a democracy?