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DIVISION V. § 2. CHAPTER XII. 3-21.
The community spirit

And when St. Paul, justifying himself here, as before and later on, by the special divine favour which has made him the apostle of the Gentiles⁹⁴, proceeds to develop his exhortation, it appears that with him, as with St. James⁹⁵, the form in which 'divine service' shows itself must be love of the brethren. To be called into the body of Christ – the society which is bound into one by His life and spirit – is to be called to social service, that is, to live a community life, and to cultivate the virtues which make true community life possible and healthy. Of these the first is humility, which in this connexion means the viewing oneself in all things as one truly is, as a part of a whole. Of the faith by which the whole body lives, a share, but only a share, belongs to each member – a certain measure of faith – and he must not strain beyond it. But he is diligently to make the best of his faculty, and do the work for which his special gift qualifies him, in due subordination to the welfare of the whole, whether it be inspired preaching, or ordinary teaching, or the distribution of alms, or presidency, or some other form of helping others which is his special function. Besides humility there are other virtues which make the life of a community healthy and happy, and St. Paul enumerates them, as they occur to his mind, in no defined order or completeness. There must be sincerity in love, that is in considering and seeking the real interest of others; there must be the righteous severity which keeps the moral atmosphere free from taint; there must be tenderness of feeling, which makes the community a real family of brothers; and an absence of all self-assertion, or desire for personal prominence; and thorough industry; and spiritual zeal; and devotion to God's service; and the cheerfulness which Christian hope inspires; and the ready endurance of affliction; and close application to prayer; and a love for giving whenever fellow Christians need; and an eagerness to entertain them when they are travelling – for 'the community' embraces, not one church only, but 'all the churches.'

Nay in a wider sense the community extends itself to all mankind, even those who persecute⁹⁶ them. According to his Lord's precepts, the Christian is only to bless his persecutors. Generally he is to be, in the deep, original sense, sympathetic with his fellow men everywhere in their joys and sorrows, and (to return to the Christian community) he is to seek to let it be pervaded by an impartial kindness; and, not thinking himself a superior person suited only for superior affairs, he is to let the current of ordinary human needs bear him along. He is not to set undue store on his own opinions⁹⁷; he is utterly to banish the spirit of retaliation; he is deliberately to plan so to live as that his life shall prove, not a stumblingblock, but a moral attraction to men in general⁹⁸; he is never to quarrel with any one if he can possibly help it; he is completely to suppress his resentment when he is wronged, and simply to leave the matter to the wrath of God, as indeed the law would have him do⁹⁹; so that, by his very meekness and returning good for evil, he may, according to the wise man's saying, heap burning shame upon his enemy, like coals of fire¹⁰⁰. Evil is all around the Christian, and it is a strong man armed; but the Christian has with him the forces of good which are yet stronger, and by no passive withdrawal, but by the active exercise of good, he is to win the victory over evil.

For I say, through the grace that was given me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but so to think as to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to each man a measure of faith. For even as we have many members in one body, and all the members have not the same office: so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and severally members one of another. And having gifts differing according to the grace that was given to us, whether prophecy, let us prophesy according to the proportion of our faith; or ministry, let us give ourselves to our ministry; or he that teacheth, to his teaching; or he that exhorteth, to his exhorting: he that giveth, let him do it with liberality; he that ruleth, with diligence; he that sheweth mercy, with cheerfulness. Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor that which is evil; cleave to that which is good. In love of the brethren be tenderly affectioned one to another; in honour preferring one another; in diligence not slothful; fervent in spirit; serving the Lord; rejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation; continuing stedfastly in prayer; communicating to the necessities of the saints; given to hospitality. Bless them that persecute you; bless, and curse not. Rejoice with them that rejoice; weep with them that weep. Be of the same mind one toward another. Set not your mind on high things, but condescend to things that are lowly. Be not wise in your own conceits. Render to no man evil for evil. Take thought for things honourable in the sight of all men. If it be possible, as much as in you lieth, be at peace with all men. Avenge not yourselves, beloved, but give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance belongeth unto me; I will recompense, saith the Lord. But if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him to drink: for in so doing thou shall heap coals of fire upon his head. Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.

(1) It is the idea of corporate life which dominates all this exhortation. No writing in the New Testament has done more than the Epistle to the Romans to strengthen the sense of spiritual individuality, and to rouse the individual spirit to protest, as it protested in Luther, against spiritual tyranny. But it is a complete mistake to suppose that the epistle is individualistic in tendency. The life into which the individual's faith in Jesus admits him is the life of a community, and its virtues are the virtues of community life. The strengthened individuality is to go to enrich an organized society.

This is expressed in the familiar metaphor of the body which had been employed in non-Christian thought before St. Paul identified it with himself and Christianity by the vigorous and profound use which he made of it¹⁰¹. The Christian community is a body bound together in a common life by a common inspiring presence and spirit. The divine grace and good favour of Christ shows itself in special 'gifts' (in the Greek this word 'charisma' expresses a particular embodiment of the general grace, 'charis,' of God); and no individual member is without his special endowment. It is not a few officers of the community who are gifted, but all; and all are to co-operate in the common life and work. Of gifts there are various sorts which we hear of in the New Testament. There are the official gifts, the result of what we call ordination, as the gift which was 'in' Timothy 'by the laying on of hands.' And those among the Christians at Rome, who 'presided' and 'ministered,' would have been, we should suppose, official presbyters or 'bishops,' and deacons. But the Roman Christians hardly constituted yet an organized church, and we cannot tell whence such officers of the community received their appointment. There is no ground for a positive assertion of any kind¹⁰². Again we hear of special gifts, such as powers of healing, speaking with tongues and prophesying, which sometimes accompanied the bestowal of the Spirit, through the laying on of hands which was given to all. And the gift of prophesying among the Roman Christians may have been a gift of this kind. But St. Paul is perhaps writing with the circumstances of the Corinthian church, rather than those of the Roman Christians, in his mind; and we can gather but little about the exact condition of things at the capital. Once more, St. Paul uses the word 'gifts' for more personal and moral endowments, as for the bent of mind which leads men, under divine guidance, towards celibacy or marriage¹⁰³. But in this place he is not distinguishing. He is hardly speaking in view of any special circumstances at Rome. He is but emphasizing the fact which is the basis of all the life of Christians everywhere – the fact that each individual member of the body has a special gift, and a special function for the good of the whole body, by which the gift is to express itself. What every individual Christian has to do, then, is to realize his own gift and correspond to it. The gift involves a certain 'measure of faith.' The faith of each individual Christian is the same in its basis. It holds him in spiritual allegiance to the same Lord, and in confession of the same elemental creed. But, besides this, it involves a special insight, which is the peculiar endowment of the individual. There is something which each man can realize and impart, as no one else is qualified to do. The Church is the poorer if he holds back or fails to stir up this gift of his own, and on the other hand he incurs the peril of presumption if he ventures beyond it. Even the inspired man, the prophet, must prophesy within the limits of what his own special proportion of faith enables him to perceive and grasp¹⁰⁴, even though another prophet with a larger faith might rightly say what he may not venture upon. 'Let each man be fully persuaded in his own mind.' For any assertion which goes beyond what the faith of the individual enables him to be convinced of, is for him 'sin.' We greatly need this exhortation to-day. The convictions of many are vague and uncertain, and their teaching without heart or force, because, like parrots, they catch up and repeat what others may have insight enough to warrant their asserting, but they have not. To correspond with one's own personal gift of faith is to realize one's vocation; and, by the development of the individual points of view, inside the common 'tradition,' the fullness and richness of the corporate faith is secured.

The cohesion of the body lies in each one's realizing his own gift, and also reverencing that of others. Here is humility. Humility is not self-contempt, or cringing to others. To realize one's own gift, one's own relation to God, gives to each man a dignity, a power to stand upright and face the world. The sovereign Master and Giver has given me my own life and my own gifts. He is responsible for the existence which He gave me, and I am not to shame Him by shrinking from making the best of it. But also humility is, in all relations, truth about ourselves. It is truth about ourselves as regards God, who is simply the giver of whatever we have and are; and it is truth about ourselves as regards our fellow men – our own gifts being justly appraised only when they are regarded as means of serving the body as a whole, without any self-aggrandizement, with a due respect to the gifts of others, and even a positive will to let them have higher place than ourselves.

Indeed we shall do well to meditate deeply on this. What good work is there which is not in more or less continual danger of suffering, or even being abandoned, because fellow Christians, zealous fellow Christians, will plainly, and it must be wilfully, yield to the ambition to be first: will not be content to be second or third: will not do the unobtrusive work: will think 'How can I shine,' rather than 'How can I serve'? In fact, how very unwilling we are to recognize, in our ideals of education, and in our theory of grown life, that ambition, in the strict sense of the word – the desire to obtain distinction for ourselves, as distinct from the desire to serve – is not a motive which Christianity can sanction, or from which it can hope for a blessing.

We linger lovingly, wistfully, on the picture of the corporate life of a Christian community. Has it vanished from the earth, this real fraternal living, 'high and low, rich and poor, one with another,' each supplementing the deficiencies of the other, and receiving of their fullness? May we not do something more than we are doing to realize it in our congregations or parishes? Is nearly enough emphasis laid on the social relationship of each congregation of fellow worshippers or each local church?

Dimly through the mist of ages in old churchwardens' accounts, in the rare instances where they have been preserved from days before the Reformation, we discern what a really fraternal, self-governing and mutually co-operative community the mediaeval English parish was. Let me extract a few sentences from the excellent preface¹⁰⁵ which Bishop Hobhouse prefixed to an edition of the surviving Churchwardens' Accounts of a number of Somersetshire parishes.

'The (parish) community was completely organized with a constitution which recognized the rights of the whole and of every adult member to a voice in self-government, but kept the self-governing community under a system of inspection and (if need should be) restraint from central authority.' 'The whole adult population were accounted parishioners, and had an equal voice when assembled for consultation under the rector. Seeing that both sexes served the office of warden, there can be no doubt that both had a vote.'

The strongly existing spirit of good will and pride in the parish church found all the necessary funds for the maintaining of the church and the services, and for the provision of often a sumptuous and rich treasury of ornaments. The needs of the Church were met generally by the local industry of 'such as were wise-hearted' – builders, carpenters, workers in gold and silver, bell-founders, embroiderers, writers, illuminators, book-binders, and others.

Hard by the church the church-house was the centre of the popular recreations of the holy day or holiday.

The parish elected and paid its own officers, except the rector, and the affairs and ornaments of the church, even in part the arrangement of the services, were under the government, not of the rector, but of the parish meeting, of which he was president, under the restraining hand of the rural dean and archdeacon.

The support of the poor or disabled was a wholly voluntary matter. 'The brotherhood tie was so strongly realized by the community, that the weaker ones were succoured by the stronger as out of a family store.'

'All the tendency of the feudal system, working through the machinery of the manorial court, was to keep the people down. All the tendency of the parochial system, working through the parish council, holding its assemblies in the churches, where the people met on equal terms as children and servants of the living God, and members of one body in Christ Jesus, was to lift the people up.' In these assemblies there was no distinction between lord and vassal, high and low, rich and poor; in them the people learnt the worth of being free. Here were the schools in which, in the slow course of centuries, they were disciplined to self-help, self-reliance and self-respect¹⁰⁶.

No doubt these descriptions of mediaeval parish life represent an ideal very imperfectly realized. But is it not an ideal we need to recover? Is there not a call for Church reform, both moral and formal, to restore to us the community life of our parishes, and fill St. Paul's language again with its primary and natural meaning?

DIVISION V. § 3. CHAPTER XIII. 1-7.
The Christians and the imperial power

It is possible that the thought of the innocent victim of injustice and wrong waiting upon the divine wrath, brings to St. Paul's mind the idea of the State which exists to represent divine justice in the world, and minister divine wrath on behalf of the innocent. But, whether this particular connexion of thought was really in St. Paul's mind or no, at any rate the previous section has made it plain that the 'love of the brethren' must extend itself to become a right relation to all men, whether Christians or not¹⁰⁷. In particular, therefore, the relation of the Christians to the imperial authority could not fail to be a matter which required attention and apostolic counsel. The Jews, whose theocratic principles made submission to government by 'the uncircumcised' at least a real abandonment of a religious ideal¹⁰⁸, had always an instinctive tendency to rebellion; and the Christian church built upon Judaism might easily have inherited this instinct. The catholic church of the new covenant, might have claimed to be a theocracy like that of the old. Especially at Rome, where the Jews were a vast and formidable body who had recently given trouble and been expelled¹⁰⁹, the attitude of the Christians, who were identified with them, might easily be misunderstood. Or on the other hand the Jews themselves, at Rome as at Thessalonica¹¹⁰, might represent the Christians as disloyal to Caesar. Moreover, apart from all unjustified slanders, the spirit of the 'fifth monarchy men' has seldom been altogether absent from periods of Christian enthusiasm; and the restless and undisciplined tendencies at Thessalonica¹¹¹, which the mistaken expectation of the immediate second coming of Christ had encouraged, were a sign that Christians might easily find it difficult to settle down as good citizens in the great empire of the world.

St. Paul therefore, here and elsewhere, would make it quite plain that the catholic church, if it is like the ancient Israel, is like it only as it was in exile – when the children of Israel were bidden to be good citizens of the Babylonian empire, and to seek the peace of the city whither God had caused them to be carried away captive, and to pray unto the Lord for it, for in the peace thereof they should have peace¹¹². Thus the Church was not a theocracy, but a 'settlement of strangers and exiles¹¹³,' waiting for the visible establishment of the kingdom or city of God, and meanwhile maintaining a polity or ordered social life of their own, but on a voluntary and catholic (or non-national) basis. Therefore, so long as God maintains 'the present world,' they must be good citizens of whatever earthly state they happen to live under. On this basis, then, St. Paul reminds each single person of the duty of political loyalty. The earthly state is of God's establishing, as well as the kingdom of Christ, and fulfils a divine purpose with divine authority. It exists to suppress moral outrage and lawlessness¹¹⁴, to maintain justice and right. Its officers are God's ministers (as truly as the officers of the Church, though in a different order), and must be obeyed accordingly, under peril not only of civil punishment for disobedience, but under peril of divine judgement also, and as a matter of conscience. The good man, and therefore the good Christian, has nothing to fear from the empire or its officers. And he will readily, and as a matter of conscience, pay his tribute as a subject, and his taxes as a citizen, to the proper authorities, and give to each imperial officer the respect which is his due.

Let every soul be in subjection to the higher powers: for there is no power but of God; and the powers that be are ordained of God. Therefore he that resisteth the power, withstandeth the ordinance of God: and they that withstand shall receive to themselves judgement. For rulers are not a terror to the good work, but to the evil. And wouldest thou have no fear of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise from the same: for he is a minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is a minister of God, an avenger for wrath to him that doeth evil. Wherefore ye must needs be in subjection, not only because of the wrath, but also for conscience sake. For for this cause ye pay tribute also; for they are ministers of God's service, attending continually upon this very thing. Render to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honour to whom honour.

Our Lord, by His whole bearing towards Jewish nationalism and by His clear prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem, as well as by His particular injunction to 'render unto Caesar the things that were Caesar's,' had made it evident to His disciples that the sceptre had departed from Judah, and had determined the attitude of Christians towards the empire. They could not indeed be as other inhabitants of the empire, for they were waiting, and praying, and working, for the visible establishment of a city and kingdom of God on earth – little as either the 'times and seasons,' or the character and manner, of that city and kingdom had been revealed to them. Thus the Roman empire could not but be in their eyes a kingdom of this world destined for overthrow. But it was by the methods of meekness, and by purely spiritual weapons, that the kingdom of God was to come, and the great overthrow, whatever it should prove to be, was to be effected. This at least was certain; and meanwhile the Roman empire represented the divine principle of authority and order, and must be obeyed.

St. Paul no doubt had, more than any other apostle, a real feeling for the empire and the city of which he was a citizen. Moreover, he saw in the organization of the empire a great framework and vehicle for the establishment and spread of the catholic church. And hitherto certainly (at least, since the fatal moment of Pilate's weakness) the Church had continually experienced the assistance of the imperial authorities. It was a misused spiritual authority, before which the protest had to be made, 'We must obey God rather than man¹¹⁵.' It was the Jewish authorities who persecuted the Church. It was the Jewish king who put James to death. At Paphos, Thessalonica, Corinth, Ephesus, the imperial authorities had been more or less friendly, and even at Philippi they had been reduced to an attitude of apology by the bare mention of Roman citizenship. St. Paul's experiences, therefore, had prepared him to 'appeal unto Caesar,' and to expect justice and freedom for himself and his cause. Even the beginnings of the experience of imperial hostility and persecution did not quash or even weaken this attitude in St. Peter¹¹⁶. St. Peter and St. Paul idealize the empire almost as if it could do no wrong, and the righteous had nothing to fear from it. Of course, when this expectation had been rudely shattered – when the imperial authority had come chiefly to mean the persecution of the saints – an opposite sort of idealism takes place, and Rome appears as the great 'beast' of violence in the Apocalypse of John. Both idealizations represent truth – the truth of what the State is meant to be on the one side, and of what it may become on the other. But after considerable experience of persecution, Clement of Rome is still full of admiration for the divine order of the imperial rule, and recognizes the duty of obedience to his 'rulers and governors upon earth,' side by side with the duty of obedience to 'God's almighty and most excellent name'; and as it is God who has given the rulers their authority, he prays for grace to submit to them, and offers rich prayer for their welfare and that of the empire. And the spirit lived on in the Christian church through all the persecutions, and the apologists for Christianity loved to protest their loyalty to the empire, and to think of their church as 'the soul of the world,' maintaining it by prayer and virtue in the midst of impiety and corruption.

In England this passage has often been put to two conspicuously unjustifiable uses. First, it was the stronghold of the maintainers of 'the divine right of kings' and of 'passive obedience.' In reality it asserts the divine right of civil authority, but not of any particular kind of civil authority. Indeed the government of the empire was still nominally a republic in its fundamental forms, though it was becoming a despotism in fact. And supposing the senate and people had – as is of course conceivable – reasserted their authority over their 'emperors,' or military officers, the Christian doctrine of divine right would have afforded no guidance as to which of the claimants to authority had the divine will on its side. What is barely asserted is the divine right of the existing civil authority, democratic or regal. And while our passage exalts the normal duty of obedience, it suggests no answer to the question – Is there not a point where a government so manifestly fails to maintain the divine order in the world, or to represent the will of God and the best interests of the people, that it deserves to be put an end to? At such a point Christianity can only serve to reinforce the natural instincts of justice and right.

And again, the words, 'the powers that be are ordained of God: therefore he that resisteth the power withstandeth the ordinance of God,' have often been used in England to justify a claim on behalf of the State to coerce and govern the Church and the consciences of men in spiritual matters. But such an idea is utterly alien to the mind of the New Testament. In the matters which concern our spiritual salvation, the authority which is to discipline and control us is the binding and loosing, absolving and retaining, authority which is entrusted not to the State, but to the Church. Attempts are recorded in history on the part of the State to crush out the Church, and on the part of the Church to usurp the authority of the State and use its weapons. Such attempts, we trust, belong to past history. An attempt, too, specially identified with England, has been made to identify a national Church and State as only different aspects of the same society, so that the government of the national Church can be more or less fused in that of the State. But whatever may be said of such an attempt in the past, in our modern England the plain facts of the political and religious situation are flatly repugnant to it; and there can evidently be no reasonable religious government in the Church of England till it is conducted again in obedience to the fundamental Christian principle that our national and local Church is part of a great catholic society, which Christ endowed with an independent spiritual authority, and a law and constitution and ministers of its own. The State may need an established national church as much as ever to enable it to fulfil its highest functions, but any 'Establishment' in these days must be consistent with the fullest recognition of the spiritual and political liberties of those members of the State who belong to other religious bodies, and also must be based upon recognition that the Church and State are fundamentally distinct, and relatively independent societies.

But it behoves us Churchmen, not only to assert the spiritual liberties of the Church, but also to realize a great deal more fully than we do, the divine authority of the civil ministers and civil laws in their own department. The State exists to embody and represent in the world the divine justice, which is to be the basis of the government of men. Its ministers – magistrates, legislators, officers of justice – are 'God's ministers': laws which are passed by the State in fulfilment of its divine mission – laws intended to maintain the health and prosperity of the people as a whole – have a divine sanction; and we Churchmen can only be what the Church should be, 'the soul of the world,' if we make it a matter of conscience, a great deal more deliberately than it is at present with most of us, to aid vigorously in the administration of the good laws which already exist, national and municipal, and to promote intelligently and enthusiastically the purposes of civil government by helping towards better laws; so that our government, as a whole, may become a continually completer image of the equitable and impartial righteousness of God.