When and how should Christians tell the government to back off? God gives us help in figuring this out in the example of Paul who freely asserted that he was a Roman with the rights of a Roman. Rome's soldiers had saved Paul from a mob in the temple. Paul then spoke to the crowd and another outcry arose. So the commander decided to scourge Paul to find out why the mob was so furious. As he was being tied, Paul asked, “Is it lawful to scourge a Roman?” The answer was no. Paul had done the same thing in Philippi. After being caned and imprisoned for the night, he let the authorities know that they had punished a Roman uncondemned. When the commander here asked Paul if he were truly a Roman, he answered yes, he'd been born a Roman. Then Paul was untied, and they did not scourge him. Instead they called in the Jewish leaders the next day to conduct a proper inquiry. In I Co 6 the Bible warns us against lawsuits that bring ill repute to the church. In Matthew 5 Jesus warns us against personal revenge. But here we see the right way to use a country's good laws to insist on justice. Paul was both a Christian and a Roman, and when the laws of Rome protected what was right and good, he had no hesitation in invoking them.
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Bill Edgar has been the pastor of the Broomall Reformed Presbyterian Church since 1981 and a teacher of mathematics at East High School in West Chester, Pennsylvania since 1980. He was graduated from Swarthmore College in 1968, attended the Reformed Presbyterian Theological...
