Category Archives: Romans

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“In Christ”: united with Christ, immersed in Christ

I knew biblical passages about our solidarity with Christ—we are “in Christ,” we are the body of Christ, and so on. But I wasn’t sure how that connected with our personal spiritual experience of Christ. Was it related to Christ living in us (Gal 2:20)? Was it related to experiencing his resurrection life through the Spirit? After all, ancient Israelites were corporately related to Jacob without a personal experience of Jacob. Humanity is sinful without humans today having ever personally met a guy named Adam.

But of course, as I learned, the nature of the relationship is not exactly the same. We are reckoned in Adam in Rom 5:12-21 as Adam’s heirs, as descendants and fellow sinners. We become reckoned in Christ through baptism into Christ, not through genetic descent. “Adam” might dwell in us in some sense (in terms of solidarity as descendants and sinners), but the Spirit of Christ makes Christ present to us more dynamically (Rom 8:9).

Solidarity with Christ

Paul emphasizes that believers’ solidarity with Christ brings deliverance greater than the defeat effected by our solidarity with Adam (Rom 5:12-21). He then goes on to develop the theme of our union with Christ rather than with the “old person” (6:6) in Adam. Baptized into Christ (6:3-4), we share Christ’s death and resurrection (6:3-6a, 11). Paul can take for granted that being baptized into Christ entails baptism into his death because he understands that immersion into Christ includes sharing his experience. It is not merely theoretical.

“Don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we were buried with him by this baptism into this death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the Father’s glory, we too might live a new life. For since we’ve been grafted together/united with/identified with him in the image of his death, still more certainly we shall be united/identified with him in the image of his resurrection. We know that our old self was crucified with him … So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Rom 6:3-5a, 11, ESV)

This sense of solidarity with Christ is not limited to one passage. Not also Colossians 3: “For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God” (Col 3:3 NASB); “Christ who is your life” (3:4, NRSV); you “have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator” (3:10 NIV).

Paul finds partial analogies for this solidarity in shared experience in terms of sharers with Adam in sin (Rom 5:12-21) and Israel’s shared experience with Moses. In 1 Cor 10:2, by analogy with Christian experience of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, Israelites were “baptized into Moses” (though, Paul warns, they failed to persevere). We may think similarly how Jesus recapitulates elements of Israel’s experience in the early chapters of Matthew’s Gospel.

Being baptized into Christ means that we have clothed ourselves with Christ (Gal 3:27); we share in him a new identity. We have put on the new person, recreated in God’s image (Eph 4:22-24; Col 3:9-10), as humanity was created in God’s image in the beginning (Gen 1:26). Obviously this solidarity has a forensic dimension: that is, how God views us in Christ. Yet it also must impact reality on our side as well as God’s. We are called to be what we are in Christ. In Christ, we must put off the old person (what we were in Adam) and put on the new, recreated in God’s image (Eph 4:22-24; cf. Col 3:8). We must live according to the new identity God has conferred on us in Christ.

Paul says that as we bore Adam’s mortal image, we shall also bear the immortal image of Christ (1 Cor 15:49). Progressively (2 Cor 3:17) and ultimately (Rom 8:29) we are conformed to the image of Christ, who is God’s image (2 Cor 4:4; Col 1:15). We are conformed to this image by being shaped by the fruit of the Spirit within us (Gal 5:22-23), essentially by Christ living in us (Gal 2:20).

Immersed in Christ

How is this sharing of Christ effected in us? The Spirit of Christ (Rom 8:9) lives in us.

The Spirit baptizes us into Christ: “by/in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body” (1 Cor 12:13). Ancient Jewish baptisms were ritual immersions, so the picture here is of the Spirit immersing us in Christ. This picture suggests that being clothed with Christ is not limited only to the way God sees us.

Paul’s expressions would make sense to those already familiar with early Christian language inherited from John the Baptist: “he will baptize you in the Holy Spirit” (Matt 3:11; Mark 1:8; Luke 3:16; John 1:33; Acts 1:5; 11:16). (There is also a narrower sense of this phrase in the NT, but at this point I am using the phrase in the more general way.)

Not surprisingly, then, Luke, who speaks of the church being baptized in the Spirit, in his narratives parallels the ministries of the Jerusalem Jesus movement (led by Peter) and the Diaspora mission (led by Paul) with Jesus’s ministry. The same Lord worked in both Peter and Paul (Gal 2:7-8).

Because the Spirit of God is also the Spirit of Christ, being immersed in the Spirit entails being immersed in Christ. We read the Gospels as the story of our hero, but also our model, and the one the Spirit empowers us to follow. Thus in three successive paragraphs, Mark announces Jesus as the Spirit-baptizer (Mark 1:8), the pioneer of the Spirit-baptized life (1:9-11), and as the model of what this looks like as the Spirit thrusts him into conflict with the spiritual enemy (1:12-13). Jesus keeps warning disciples that they must share both his faith (9:19, 23, 29; 11:21-24) and his suffering (8:34; 13:13).

Walking in Christ

“As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, walk in him, rooted and constructed in him” (Col 2:6-7)

“This is how we know that we’re in him: whoever claims to dwell in him ought to walk just as he walked” (1 John 2:5-6)

Our solidarity with Adamic humanity comes by birth. In Adam, we share glorious DNA designed to reflect God’s image yet alienated from God’s presence and purpose by human sin.

Our solidarity with Christ comes by baptism, yes, in water, at the entrance into new life, but also in the Spirit. We share Christ’s life, death, burial and resurrection because we are immersed in him. Through the mind of the Spirit (Rom 8:5), the mind of Christ (1 Cor 2:16), we grow to think in his ways and act how Jesus would. The old adage, “What would Jesus do?” is more than a slogan; it invites us to think and act as Jesus thinks and acts, just as Jesus acted only as he saw the Father acting (John 5:19-20). The Spirit communicates Christ himself in the preaching of the gospel (see John 16:7-11; 1 Thess 2:13). Because Christ lives in us by the Spirit (John 14:17), we bear his fruit like branches on the vine (15:4-5), continuing many aspects of his mission (20:21-22). To walk in the Spirit (Gal 5:16) is also to walk in Christ (Col 2:6).

To the extent that we recognize that God has effected our solidarity with Christ, we can appropriate that identity as members of Christ (i.e., of his body; Rom 12:5; 1 Cor 6:15; Eph 4:25). We can remember that Christ lives in us and trust his character to live through us. The better we know what he is like, the more we can reflect that character by faith. Because we are each unique members of his body, we will individually reflect different aspects of his ministry. None of us is the entire body of Christ to himself.

It should be able to go without saying, but unfortunately often can’t go without saying, that we do not take the place of Jesus; the opposite must be the case: Jesus as Lord reigns in us so as to make his heart known. This comes through our direct relationship with the head, Jesus Christ, who is the source of our new life: Eph 4:15-16; Col 2:19; 3:4a).

We aren’t Jesus, but we are his agents. And when those agents work together, those around can see a fuller picture of Christ’s character through his body functioning together. As his body we together ideally reveal his character, his heart, his purposes, so that it is no longer we who live but Christ who lives in us (Gal 2:20). Immersed in Christ, clothed in Christ, we want our lives to reveal Christ in what we say and do and think. Together as the diverse members of Christ’s body, we are invited to show the world what Christ among them would do, proving God’s transforming power even to the heavenly rulers (Eph 3:10). Ideally, we as Christ’s body should mature into unity in trusting and knowing Christ (Eph 4:12-13). No one has seen God, but by loving one another we give the world a taste of God (1 John 4:12), and we know that we live in him and he in us because he has given us his Spirit (1 John 4:13).

Scholars debate today the meaning of “baptism in the Spirit.” More important than those debates about wording, however (which I deliberately sidestep in this post) is that we really embrace all that the Spirit wants to do in us. God desires to enable us to live like those immersed in his Spirit, and immersed in Christ. God wants people to continue to see what Jesus is like as the Spirit of Christ works in and through us.

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Welcoming each another—Romans 15:1-7

In Romans 14:1-23 Paul summons believers to respect one another despite their differences on issues secondary to the gospel that unites us. In light of Paul’s language there and the larger context of Romans, Paul is especially calling Jewish and Gentile believers to welcome one another (see esp. 15:7-12). This welcome transcends a barrier that God himself established in history, so it certainly summons us to surmount prejudices of merely human origin: prejudices against ethnic, cultural, and similar differences.

In 15:1-13 Paul further summons us not just to tolerate secondary differences but also to serve one another’s interests (to “please” one another, 15:1-3). Just as those who are physically strong would be expected to help weaker family members, Paul reminds those apt to criticize the “weak” that they should be helping them instead (15:1). Echoing the earlier context, the “weak” refer to those weak in faith hence abstaining from particular foods lest they injure their relationship with God (14:1-2).

Paul ranks himself among the “strong” here, and will soon offer himself as an example of serving the poor saints in Jerusalem (15:25-27). But the strong are called to serve the weak. “Build up” in 15:2 evokes 14:19-20, where believers should build up (by the fruit of the Spirit) rather than tear down one another over foods.

“Pleasing” others rather than oneself (15:1-3) refers not to entertaining others’ every whim (e.g., if they are bothered by your music style, e.g., Christian rap), but to being considerate of what might cause them to fall from the faith. Although Paul regarded circumcising Gentiles as too much to ask, for Gentiles to accommodate Jewish food tastes in mixed company was a minimal sacrifice for the objective of unity in Christ’s body.

Christ himself offered the example of this readiness to forgo pleasing himself; in 15:3, Paul cites Ps 69:9 from a psalm of a righteous sufferer, applied par excellence to Jesus (cf. Jn 2:17 for a different part of the same verse; Matt 27:34 for Ps 69:21). Here Jesus suffers on behalf of God, offering a model of laying down one’s desires to serve others.

As Jesus is the example for not seeking one’s own interests (15:3), he is also the example for seeking this unity: we should have the same mind “according to [the standard of] Christ Jesus” (15:5; cf. Phil 2:1-11, especially 2:2-5). Believers may with united voice glorify the Father (15:6) just as Jesus prayed to the Father in 15:3 (and establishes Gentiles’ praise in 15:9-12). Believers should again follow Jesus’ example by accepting one another as he accepted us (15:7). (Consider one of Jesus’s lines in an episode of Dallas Jenkins’ recent TV series, The Chosen. When Peter objects to Jesus calling a tax collector, Jesus points out that Peter made no such objection when Jesus called Peter. “That’s different!” Peter insists. “Get used to different,” Jesus replies.)

This expectation climaxes the section’s opening exhortation to accept one another (14:1) because of God’s acceptance (14:3). That Christ accepted believers to the Father’s “glory” (15:7) fits the exhortation to “glorify” God together (15:6), a model relevant for Gentile believers (15:9).

(This post is adapted from Craig S. Keener, Romans [New Covenant Commentary; Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2009], 170-72.)

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Provoking Israel’s jealousy—Romans 11

Paul certainly cared about Gentiles; his letters are replete with signs of his intimate concern for the members of the many congregations he started, many of whose members were Gentiles. The Bible also suggests that the Lord will return after the good news has been proclaimed among all peoples (Matt 24:14), probably related to Paul’s idea about the “full number of the Gentiles” (Rom 11:25).

Yet Paul also had a special concern for his own Jewish people, and he even viewed his Gentile mission as somehow also a witness to his own people. Building on a passage from the Old Testament (which he quotes in Rom 10:19), Paul explains that the conversion of the Gentiles should make his own people jealous (Rom 11:11, 14). Thus the full measure of Gentiles being saved would precipitate his own people turning to God, hence the completion of salvation history (11:25-27).

It would have made sense to Paul that his people would recognize God at work through his and others’ ministry in converting Gentiles. After all, Paul’s people knew the biblical promises about vast numbers of Gentiles coming to acknowledge Israel’s God (Isa 19:19-25; Zech 2:11); if these new followers of Israel’s God came through recognition of Jesus as Israel’s king, surely Israel itself should recognize its own king. Many scholars even believe that Paul intended his own offering from his Diaspora churches, brought for the needs of the Jerusalem church (Rom 15:26-27), as a partial fulfillment of the promised gifts from the nations (Isa 60:9).

Surely the Jewish people today can look around, see the more than two billion Christians in the world, and see how Gentiles now worship their one God and use their Scriptures because of Jesus? Surely Israelis can see all the tourists pouring into the land and see the nations streaming to Zion, as Isaiah promised, fulfilled through Jesus?

That would be nice. Through much of history, however, a large proportion of Jewish people have affirmed that regarding the Jewish teacher Jesus as Messiah is a belief suited only for Gentiles, not for their own people. Although many more Jewish people affirm Jesus as Messiah today than through most of history, the response of his people clearly did not go as Paul hoped.

Why did the proliferation of faith in Israel’s one true God among the Gentiles not serve as a witness to Israel? Largely because Gentile Christians ignored Paul’s other teachings in the same context.

Paul portrayed Gentile Christians as grafted into Israel’s heritage (Rom 11:17), as fulfillments of the promise that Abraham would be a father to many nations (4:16-18). That is, Paul viewed them as spiritual proselytes, who recognized that in accepting Jesus as Lord they were also embracing the king of Israel, the God of Israel, and the heritage and promises that belonged to Israel. He warned Gentile Christians not to boast against the Jewish people into whose heritage they had been grafted (11:18-21).

Yet this is precisely what most Gentile Christians ultimately did. Much of Christendom, through most of Christian history, viewed the church as a replacement for Israel, and viewed formal membership in the church as salvific in the same way that the Jewish community had viewed membership in Israel as salvific—the very sort of arrogance that Paul denounced.

For Paul, salvation was through faith in Christ, not through ethnicity or membership in a particular group. This was especially true when parts of the church implemented rules that excluded those practicing certain ancestral customs that were not genuinely antithetical to faith in Christ. (That is, Messianic Jews were unwelcome in both most Jewish and Christian communities, instead of being welcomed to form a bridge between them.)

Anti-Jewish sentiments were common in the Greco-Roman world, especially among Greeks; indeed, Gentiles in places like Alexandria and Caesarea genocidally slaughtered local Jewish communities in the years and decades after Paul wrote. Many converts to Christianity retained this pagan anti-Judaism when they became Christians, ignoring the Jewish heritage of their faith.

Though few went as far as Marcion (who rejected the Old Testament and the God of Israel outright), many Gentile Christians accepted Christ (the Messiah) while rejecting his people. The subsequent history of Christendom in the west is stained with the blood of vast numbers of Jewish people drowned in “baptisms,” crucified, tortured by the Inquisition, and so forth. While God’s grace is evident in much of Christian history, the Christian doctrine to which it often testifies most eloquently is human depravity. (We should pause to note that many church leaders tried to protect Jews from such pogroms; but on a more popular level anti-Jewish ways of preaching combined with indigenous human prejudice to promote violence.)

Paul’s ideal vision for his people’s salvation never succeeded because it was never really implemented. What might happen today if Gentile Christians were to show the Jewish people that we have come to faith in Israel’s God? What might happen if we expressed appreciation to the Jewish people for sharing their God with the rest of humanity, most of whom once worshiped or feared many lesser gods? If we affirmed that we embrace rather than usurp their heritage?

Whatever the response might be in our day, after so many centuries of anti-Semitism, we owe it both to the Jewish people and to our Lord Jesus to offer this recognition.

(P.S., I strongly disagree with those who use honoring our Jewish heritage as an excuse to be anti-Arab. But that is a subject different from this post.)

Craig Keener is author of a short (yes, short!) commentary on Romans (Cascade, 2009), in a commentary series he coedits with the brilliant and exceedingly humorous Michael Bird. (OK, short compared to his stuff on Acts …)

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Families Separated at the Border—Genesis 12 and Romans 13

This post is in response to U.S. attorney general Jeff Sessions citing Romans 13:1-7 with respect to taking children from their parents at the border.

To be fair, the larger context of his statement is that nations need to be able to legally protect their borders. But the larger, larger context is response to the issue of separating families. Although this post will touch on biblical thoughts related to immigration policies (which will not be resolved here), it is the attorney general’s appeal to Scripture that has invited my wading into the issue.

(Also, up front about me: my wife and kids are legal immigrants from Africa. All came from very dangerous situations, but given the limited number of refugees brought into the U.S. each year, probably none of them could have come as refugees. As of two years ago, the estimated total of involuntarily displaced persons globally was 65 million. The U.S. currently has a cap of 50,000 refugees allowed per year, which would be just over 0.08 % of the total. In the special circumstances of 2016, Germany admitted perhaps ten times that number, mostly from the Middle East.)

But is there biblical precedent for separating families at borders?

Well, sort of: when Abram entered Egypt as an economic migrant or refugee, Pharaoh took Sarai from him (Genesis 12:10-16). God judged Pharaoh’s household for what Pharaoh did to God’s servants (12:17). Some families separated at the U.S. border today might also be God’s servants.

Obeying the Government in Romans 13

But the attorney general was referring instead to Romans 13:1-7. Unfortunately, there is plenty of precedent in church history for governments exploiting this passage to justify conformity to laws that they did not have to create or apply the way they did—including by slaveholders and the Nazi and apartheid regimes.

I am not implying moral equivalence with Hitler’s regime. I am just saying that quoting Romans 13 does not prove its applicability for every situation. Paul wrote that lengthy (paragraph-long) admonition to just one church—the one in the capital, where Christian witness and relations with the imperial government were most at stake. There had also been recent unrest about paying taxes. Add to that unrest in Judea, which in just over a decade would break out in war. It already had a number of other Jews trying to explain to the government that many Jews were loyal and not about to start a revolution.

Speaking of revolutions, the British applied Romans 13 differently than the colonists during the States’ War of Independence. (I personally think the British had a better case than does the attorney general. But now, aside from stepping outside my expertise, I may be getting too controversial …) For further comments on the proper context of Romans 13:1-7, see especially the comments of Wheaton College professor Lynn Cohick (soon to be provost/dean at Denver Seminary and president of the Institute of Biblical Research) in USA Today.

When I was a young Christian, my father at one point forbade me to talk further with my brothers about the Bible. When I tried to persuade him of his need to accept Christ, he said I was disobeying the verse that says to honor one’s parents. The Bible said to obey one’s parents. What was I to do? I felt guilty either way, but chose what I thought was the lesser of two evils. I met with my younger brother Chris to disciple him when my parents were asleep. I kept attending church and sharing Christ on the street despite being aware of my father’s displeasure. I wish I had understood back then that Jonathan and Michal were right to protect David from their father Saul, who wanted to kill him. My father and I eventually had a wonderful relationship. But I share this account reluctantly (and for the first time publicly) to point out that sometimes we have to disobey authorities, though it must be only when absolutely necessary.

The Bible and immigrants

There are more complex issues about immigration, Scripture, and security that I cannot address here, but I will survey some Scripture before going on to questions of application.

God commanded his people to welcome and care for foreigners (see especially Lev 19:34; 23:22; Deut 10:18; 14:29; 24:14, 17, 19-21; 26:13), even embracing as “citizens” (members of Israel) those willing to become part of their people (Num 9:14; 15:14, 16, 26, 29-30; 19:10; 35:15; Deut 1:16; 26:11; 31:12). (Thank God: this provides some of the Old Testament basis for gentiles being grafted into God’s people in the New Testament. Any of us who are ethnically gentile should appreciate God’s kindness in welcoming us as fellow citizens with his people—Eph 2:19.)

  • “The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God” (Lev 19:34, NIV).
  • “And you are to love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt” (Deut 10:19, NIV).
  • “Do not deprive the foreigner or the fatherless of justice, or take the cloak of the widow as a pledge” (Deut 24:17, NIV).
  • “Cursed is anyone who withholds justice from the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow” (Deut 27:19, NIV).

What might apply to economic refugees might apply even more to refugees from violence, such as the family of Jesus traveling to Egypt to evade Herod’s brutal regime.

The hard part: how does this apply to public policy?

I will offer some suggestions about what I think, but a reader who protests, “You are outside your expertise!” would be correct. We all do our best to apply the Bible as wisely as possible. I am doing my best in this section, but this is not where my qualifications lie.

Security issues differ today from those in ancient Israel, and that I am not sufficiently qualified regarding modern public policy or economics to speak as directly to these issues. Most nations back then did not restrict entry or control borders to the extent practiced today. It would have violated ancient protocols of hospitality, not only for Israel, but also for most of their “pagan” neighbors. Of course, individuals or families migrating differed from a massive group like Israel passing through someone’s territory. Edom and some other nations perceived them as a threat and turned them away (Num 20:18-21).

So some rightly point out that Abram was not an “illegal” immigrant. (In fact, he was warmly welcomed, albeit partly because Pharaoh took a liking to his wife. A great “me too” passage, but that is for another time.) Neither, however, was Abram a “legal” immigrant in the modern sense. I don’t know how much paperwork he had to fill out, but he certainly didn’t have to wait six months or a number of years to enter the country.

I also recognize that part of the stated reason the U.S. government is separating children from their parents is to prevent detaining them with their parents in unhealthy or penal settings. Part of the stated reason for detaining the parents is that the influx of immigrants is becoming too great for the social systems around the border to handle. (I dislike this reasoning, but while my biblical expertise informs my ethical convictions, nobody consults me on public policy matters.)

It is also true that few nations can think of absorbing all the tens of millions of refugees fleeing violence around the world today, whether from governments or gangs. Happily, some nations, such as Germany, Lebanon, Uganda and Jordan, have been accepting and sometimes absorbing massive numbers of refugees, despite many problems along the way. More prosperous and stable nations naturally do become greater magnets for those in need.

I do not have a solution, but I believe that one ethical component of such a solution that would benefit everyone is to invest heavily in improving the stability of economic development of other nations, not least those at one’s borders. We all know that various factors make this ideal impossible in many places, but a country that could invest in building a massive wall on its southern border (for probably much more than $20 billion) might also be able to make staying at home more attractive for people in some countries.

According to the intergovernmental Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, which supports democracy and market economics, the U.S. ranks a respectable second (at some $31 billion) only to the European Union (at some $92 billion) in development aid to other countries. In terms of its development aid per capita, however, it ranks eighteenth, and in gross national income, it spends closer to 0.17%, ranking twentieth. That is almost $100 for every U.S. resident; many of us as Christians give far more than that through Christian or other NGOs. But Norway, by comparison, invests more than $800 per resident. What we learn from such figures certainly is limited: how money is used often matters more than how much money is used. But my point in citing these figures is to remind us that there remains room for us to do better—at least for those of us with biblical values.

Applying biblical ethics to secular governments?

Again, I have to concede that my above considerations from Scripture do not dictate what the United States must do. Ancient Israel was a theocracy supposed to obey God’s virtues; as an individual Christian I recognize that non-Christian nations will not abide by specifically biblical virtues, such as loving one’s neighbor as oneself (Lev 19:18), loving foreigners as oneself (Lev 19:34; cf. Deut 10:19), or loving or defending the value of all human life. Aside from the issue at hand, I also understand why a nation not exclusively composed of Jesus’s followers might not want to practice Jesus’s even stronger ethic, given to his disciples, of turning the other cheek (Matthew 5:39; Luke 6:29).

Secular nations or businesses or other institutions will not work by Christian ethics. Still, those of us who are Christians had sure better heed these principles ourselves. Moreover, those of us who live in democracies are expected to use our voice and vote to promote values that we hold. Love of neighbor, by the way, also appears as the epitome of biblical ethics later in the chapter that Jeff Sessions cited, in Romans 13:8-10.

Before returning to matters of immigration, one more digression for U.S. readers: what precipitated this post was a Bible quotation used in a political context, not a particular U.S. political party. I believe that, for those of us who do not believe that human life begins only at birth, caring for the vulnerable includes caring for the unborn. Loyalty to Christ must trump any partisan loyalties, whether on the right or the left.

Immigrants in life-threatening situations

Obviously, many people migrate for better economic opportunities rather than life-threatening circumstances; further, some nations might limit others’ immigration for the sake of the economic welfare of current residents (I admit my lack of expertise here).

Nevertheless, sometimes people’s lives are in danger, as is the case for at least some immigrants to the United States from Central America. A law restricting entry in their case would be clearly unjust. I for one would ignore such a law if genuinely necessary to save lives, and would recommend other endangered persons to do so.

Before some readers take me as a political subversive, let’s make that hypothetical situation more concrete. U.S. immigration policies during the Nazi genocide in Europe denied entry to thousands of Jewish refugees, many of whom then died under Hitler. The U.S. did not yet know about the gas chambers or ovens, but by 1938 they knew very well that Germany was persecuting Jews. Congress, apparently in keeping with the general sentiment of the U.S. public, rejected a bipartisan bill to admit 20,000 Jewish refugee children in 1939. You know what came afterward.

What about famine? Abram didn’t face danger from violence, but he did face danger from famine, which can kill people. My wife’s entire neighborhood became refugees during the civil war she was involved in (further details in our book, Impossible Love). They lacked adequate food and clean drinking water. When, after the war, she returned to the ruins of her home, she was overwhelmed by the silence. Most of the neighbor children had died.

Does Romans 13 justify the issue at hand?

Some issues might be debatable, but others are not. The question that started this post is not just immigration. It is the use of the Bible to justify, as ethical, detaining families at the border even to the point of separating children from their parents. The attorney general may have been quoting the verse simply to say that it’s unethical to break a nation’s laws by entering it illegally. In ordinary cases might be true, though again, most Christians would make exceptions for danger to life, smuggling Bibles for persecuted Christians, and so forth.

But Romans 13 hardly resolves the question of whether those laws themselves are ethical. And when given in answer to questions about separating children at the border, an answer implicitly addressed instead to the immigrants is beside the point.

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Wake up, for the Day is near!—Romans 13:11-14

In some circles, we think of “revival” or “awakening” as happening only when people fall down weeping or laughing or have other kinds of unusual experiences. And it is true that in recent centuries, such experiences have commonly accompanied what we call awakenings. We’re not physically built to withstand the fullness of God’s glory, so sometimes people get too overwhelmed with the Spirit or God’s glory to stand before him (1 Sam 19:20-24; 1 Kgs 8:11; 2 Chron 5:14).

But as some old-time Pentecostals with experience with such matters pointed out, “It’s not how high you jump, but how straight you walk when you come down.” Genuine awakenings are followed by transformed lives. Like Jacob with his limp, those who come away from encounters with God normally come away changed.

The language of “awakening” actually comes from Scripture. Here I want to look at one passage that urges awakening: Romans 13:11-14, where Paul warns that the time has come to awaken from sleep, because Jesus’s coming has drawn nearer.

The church in Rome, whom Paul addresses, couldn’t afford to be (spiritually) asleep. Some believers in Rome have recently returned from half a decade of exile due to the previous emperor’s demand that Jews (or at least high-profile ones arguing about the Messiah) leave Rome. Within a decade after Paul’s letter, the current emperor, Nero, will be burning Christians alive to light his gardens as torches at night. Some time not long after that, Paul himself will be beheaded there in Rome. When faced with life-threatening realities, we can’t simply fade into an oblivious world around us, focused on everyday desires or objectives. If Jesus is worth dying for, he’s also worth living every moment for.

Yet it’s not merely in light of coming persecution or economic distress that Paul calls us to awaken. Paul calls us to awaken in light of Jesus’s return, and thus in light of eternity. Some people wisely think of saving for the future. But Paul is urging us to think about the longest future, a future that lasts forever.

When the alarm clock sounds, it is time to awaken from sleep. Paul says that it’s time to awaken because the promised salvation at Jesus’s return is now nearer to us than when we first were converted (13:11). We converted to live in light of salvation, but sometimes some of us forget the reality of that conviction; Paul reminds us of that reality. Of course, Jesus did not come right after Paul wrote this letter, but his basic point was an obvious one: whenever Jesus is coming, it’s nearer now than it used to be. The point is not that Jesus must come in the next few years, but that he may: his coming is always imminent.

And that puts everything in this world into a brand new light: the light of the promised future world. When Paul speaks of the “day” that is at hand (13:12), he is thinking of the day of the Lord, which will supplant darkness forever (1 Thess 5:2, 4-5). As people of the coming age, we can live our lives in the light of that coming day, rather than consumed by the present darkness. That means that we live our lives in a productive way that counts for the future, not simply squandering the present on the best that the present has to offer.

So Paul urges believers to cast off the “works of darkness” (13:12), and then gives examples: wild parties and drunken orgies, quarreling and jealousy (13:13). Paul recognizes (and is even more explicit in 1 Thess 5:7) that people are more apt to get drunk and sleep with sexual partners other than their spouses at night, but Paul adds to these sins others, more common among practicing Christians, such as quarreling and jealousy (Rom 13:13). Under cover of darkness (or social media anonymity), people act differently than they do when anybody can see them. But if we live in light of the day of the Lord, when all the secrets of everyone’s hearts will be exposed (1 Cor 4:5), we won’t want to do anything shameful. We will want our choices to count for God’s kingdom.

When Paul speaks of not providing for the flesh’s “lusts” or “desires” (Rom 13:14), he employs a Greek term that covers not just sexual desires (Rom 1:24) but any kind of coveting or desiring what is somebody else’s (7:7-8). (Paul isn’t condemning legitimate hunger or passion for one’s spouse, but desiring what we shouldn’t.) We live to serve Christ’s body, not our own (12:1-13).

Paul’s solution is not just to tell us what to avoid but what to replace it with. Putting off works of darkness, we should put on the armor of light (13:12), and put on Jesus Christ as Lord (13:14). After we wake up, we normally get dressed (cf. Isa 52:1; Acts 12:8; Rev 16:15), and Paul’s image here is no exception. Paul speaking of putting on the “armor of light” reminds us that we are in a spiritual war (Eph 6:11-17; 1 Thess 5:8), not against people, but for people. When nations are on war footing, they mobilize all their resources for their ultimate goal of victory and perhaps even survival. Likewise, we must stand guard, because ultimate matters are at stake.

In ancient theaters actors would put on masks, adopting the persona of someone else. But when we are clothed with Christ, this is no mere impersonation, using a fake mask. This adoption of a new persona is by God’s own power; the Old Testament sometimes speaks of people being “clothed” with the Spirit (the Hebrew text of Judg 6:34; 1 Chron 12:18; 2 Chron 24:20). We do not fake a new identity; by divine empowerment, we can recognize the new identity that God has given us in Christ and thus live according to his character at work in us. That, rather than any specific method, is our ultimate goal: to be so one in purpose with Christ that out of love (Rom 13:11-14) we do what he would do, reflecting his character.

What does living in light of eternity look like? Since it may look somewhat different for different individuals, your own heart is the best judge of that. Still, we let ourselves off the hook way too easily if we think that it should not make a difference in our lives, so I will try to offer a potential, concrete example.

The danger of trying to give an example of what this could look like is that someone might use the example as a standard. One generation’s acts of devotion in the midst of an outpouring of the Spirit can become the next generation’s traditions and the following generation’s legalism: because one generation gave up card-playing or jumped to show devotion to God, we think that we serve God by jumping high and eschewing card-playing. What we need is not to simulate a past generation’s or another person’s actions, but to walk in light of the same Lord that they experienced.

Lest the thought remain purely theoretical, however, let me offer examples. It seems to me that if we live in light of eternity, every temporal moment in this age becomes infused with eternal significance. It becomes an opportunity to make a difference for eternity by investing in things that matter eternally.

The average person in the United States watches some five hours of television per day. He or she will also spend five years of their life on social media. Just imagine what would happen if we dropped some non-productive activities and committed three more hours a day to prayer, study of Scripture, sharing Christ with others, helping the needy, serving our neighbors, and so forth. Imagine if, say, even just 30 million Christians in the United States alone devoted those three extra hours per day to working for the kingdom in the various ways available to us in our communities. That would yield more than 32 billion more hours of service for Christ each year. Consider how that could make this world a different place.

You may think of other ways to live in light of eternity. The important point is: we must awaken. Too much is at stake for us to live our lives for values that have no lasting significance.