Not only would the
Roman governors look upon Christians with suspicious eyes, it would be
difficult to doubt that Christians would happily return the favor. While there
is certainly an element of Christianity that rightly and responsibly challenges
the power of governments, calls the world’s rulers to account, challenges
arrogant actions and arrogations of power, and regularly holds up restraining
hands that tell governments that “you go here and no further,” there is, of
course, a legitimate role for governments. For balance and a response,
those same hands that are held up in attempts to restrain governments,
insisting that they not go beyond their rightful place as the church says
“we’ll take it from here,” are then to be turned outwards, with arms extended
wide to embrace and deal with the issues to which the church of Christ must
address itself.
Naturally, Paul
recognizes the potential for unhelpful and unhealthy conflict between the
members of the church and temporal powers. Concordantly, he urges that
‘requests, prayers, intercessions, and thanks be offered on behalf of all
people, even for kings and all who are in authority, that we may lead a
peaceful and quite life in all godliness and dignity. Such prayer for all
is good and welcomed before God our Savior, since He wants all people to be
saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:1a-4). Though
at one level this may appear to be an acquiescence, is it not an effective
counter-cultural witness? Christians, of course, are to be the greatest
of earthly citizens because they are also citizens of the kingdom of heaven
that looks to the renewal of the whole of creation (not an escape to heaven).
Now, it would not be
unreasonable to suggest that the Christians, who, owing to their “atheism”
(because they did not worship the Roman gods or Caesar), their “cannibalism”
(for the words that accompanied their communal meals), and their lack of
participation at the temples (which were also the markets and the center of
public activity) that was taken to portend a destruction of social
cohesiveness, experienced persecution at the hands of governing authorities,
would look upon those persecutors as their enemies. Therefore, this prayer for all people,
including kings and governing authorities, was a strict following of the
teachings of Jesus, who demanded His disciples to “love your enemy and pray for
those who persecute you, so that you may be like your Father in heaven”
(Matthew 5:44-45a – realizing that Matthew was probably not in circulation and
may not yet have taken the shape in which it is now to be found at the time of
the composition of the letter, and therefore, the passing along of the words of
Jesus would have been based upon Paul’s knowledge of the Jesus
tradition).
These words reach a
second level in the face of the Jew and Gentile divisions in Ephesus (and other
cities whose churches may have been recipients of the letter now called
Ephesians), with these divisions addressed in the second chapter of
Ephesians. The insistence that the Creator God “wants all people to be
saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth” speaks to the lingering
hesitation on the part of ethnic Israel to grant Gentiles status as full and
legitimate members of the covenant people of the Creator God.
So while praying for
those that may potentially be perceived or actually be enemies is
counter-cultural, so too is Paul’s insistence that Israel’s God wants all
people groups to be saved (come under the provisions of His covenant), with
this running counter to the Jewish culture that wanted to continue to reserve
their God’s blessings to Israel alone, and who attempted to enforce this
restriction by insisting that Gentiles needed to adopt the covenant markers of
Judaism (primarily circumcision, food laws, and Sabbath-keeping) to indicate
their participation under their God’s covenant.
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