Is speeding a sin?

Subjection of the ungodly to authority is purchased only by fear of punishment. But fear of consequences is certainly not the only principle that should restrain the Christian from disobedience — “not only for wrath, but also for conscience' sake.” To maintain a good conscience toward God subjection to authority is a plain necessity. We may ourselves judge, that a certain act is not intrinsically evil, but if it controverts authority, it is indirect, but nonetheless definite disobedience to God.

In Romans 12 we have seen instruction in many details of moral conduct. In such cases conscience has no liberty to take any stand but that of truth and honor. Just so in Romans 13, where questions of government are involved. For conscience sake I must be subject. If conscience requires my disobedience to authorities in order that I might obey God, it is a different matter; but I cannot plead that conscience allows me to disobey authorities simply because I see no evil in disobeying. I have no right to have so careless a conscience. Conscience is not to be the judge in such cases, but is rather to be subject to the Word of God.

The believer, that he may adorn the doctrine of God, has to exercise himself so as to have a conscience void of offence. He is to walk blameless. With the decision of political questions he has properly nothing to do. He has to submit himself to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake (1 Peter 2:13-15). God comes before him in the ordinances of men. The ruler is therefore a minister of God to him for good (verse 4). Upright conduct and peaceful following of that which is good, would secure him the favour instead of the resentment of the power. Where men can only see themselves, a believer is privileged to see God. The enactments of the ruling government are stamped with the name and weighty with the sanction of God, in every case in which nothing is enjoined on him which renders obedience possible only by a breach of some Divine command. A law might be in its terms most unjust; yet is the Christian to obey it still, if personal inconvenience or suffering be the only evil consequence of obedience. In complying with an oppressive edict of man, he is rendering obedience to the will of God, who is not slack to recompense, even in this present life, the affliction of such as suffer for His name. If he resists, he not only dishonours God, who commands subjection, but renders himself obnoxious to a special judgment at the hands of Him who is not mocked. All suffering of the kind just referred to is an affliction of the Gospel. It is something borne for the name of Christ; and the Spirit of glory and of God rests approvingly upon them that suffer thus (1 Peter 4:14).

Are we, then, at liberty to disregard human law on such a matter, because it may go beyond the requirements of God's word? No Christian should accept such a proposition for a moment. We are to "be subject to the higher powers. For there is no power but of God. The powers that be are ordained of God" (Rom. 13:1) We are to be obedient to rule (Titus 3:1) and to submit ourselves to every human institution for the Lord's sake, as Peter (1 Peter 2:13) exhorts us. Are we, then, advocating a blind subjection to earthly rule? By no means. For when human commands conflict with the divine word this same apostle has taught us how to act, as he, with the other apostles boldly told the Sanhedrin. "We ought to obey God rather than men" (Acts 5:29). But in this matter there is no conflict of authority — God's word does not enjoin on us the contracting of such unions as those of which we write, though it permits them. No one, therefore, is under divine obligation to do in this matter what the law of the land will not sanction. The Christian is clearly bound to respect such an enactment, though it may curtail the freedom allowed him by God's word. For the Lord's sake this law of the land should be respected by the child of God.

“For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil.” This is certainly the normal state. There is a point surely beyond which we must render no obedience either to rulers or anyone else except God. If they were to demand of us what is due only to God — worship, for instance, as in the case of Daniel with Darius, or his three friends with Nebuchadnezzar — we must firmly refuse. If they require us to definitely sin against God, it is for us to boldly use the language of Peter — “We ought to obey God rather than men.” But this is far different even than unjust statutes or practices that are hard and oppressive. So long as a good conscience toward God is not compromised, it is better that we suffer in subjection, and commit the keeping of our souls to God, as unto a faithful Creator. We must remember that “the heart of the king is in the hand of the Lord: He turneth it whithersoever He will.”

Again, take the following passage so beautifully illustrative of divine thoughtfulness: "When thou buildest a new house, then thou shalt make a battlement for thy roof, that thou bring not blood upon thine house, if any man fall from thence." The Lord would have His people thoughtful and considerate of others; and hence, in building their houses, they were not merely to think of themselves, and their convenience, but also of others and their safety.

Cannot Christians learn something from this? How prone we are to think only of ourselves, our own interests, our own comfort and convenience! How rarely it happens that, in the building or furnishing of our houses, we bestow a thought upon other people! We build and furnish for ourselves; alas! self is too much our object and motive spring in all our undertakings; nor can it be otherwise unless the heart be kept under the governing power of those motives and objects which belong to Christianity. We must live in the pure and heavenly atmosphere of the new creation, in order to get above and beyond the base selfishness which characterizes fallen humanity. Every unconverted man woman and child on the face of the earth is governed simply by self, in some shape or another. Self is the centre, the object, the motive-spring of every action.

"Better is the poor who walks in his integrity than one who is perverse in his lips, and is a fool" (v. 1). This should be so evident as to need little comment, for who would rather be a wealthy fool than a poor wise man? Certainly, only one already a fool would desire this. In this case the person is without knowledge (v. 2). it is interesting that it is added here, "and he sins who hastens with his feet." This seems to imply that one who is without knowledge is liable to rush into action for which he is not prepared. May we be preserved from such sin!

It has often been said, and still oftener thought, that the act of our first parents in thus eating of the forbidden fruit was a trivial act, when compared with the consequences it involved. Nothing can be more absurd than such a thought. The occasion afforded them of obeying or disobeying was certainly in itself, viewed apart from God's command, a trivial one. But not only did it cease to be a trifle, when it had become the subject of a divine command, and a test of man's obedience, but the more trivial in itself the prohibited act, the more fearful and manifest the guilt of disobedience. The man who would be a traitor for a toy would be justly held more culpable than one whose inducement to revolt was the anticipated possession of a kingdom. If it were a small matter to eat the fruit of any particular tree, it was surely a small matter to abstain therefrom. But, for the sake of so confessedly small a matter, to disobey God's command, was not a trifle, but an act of gravest significance and deepest guilt. Consider the elements which are combined in such an act — which were combined in this. Distrust of their Creator's goodness; the denial of His veracity; ingratitude for all the bounties He had bestowed upon them, and all the favours He had shown them; contempt of all the blessedness involved in His continued favours, along with the hardihood which dared Him to fulfil the threatening He had denounced. These, as well as the trampling under foot authority, the aspiring to equality with Him, and the preferring Satan as their friend and counselor to the God who had given them existence, with all that made that existence a blessing, were some of the chief moral elements involved in the act which has been deemed so trivial by their fallen and corrupted offspring.

"Let every soul be subject to authorities in power. For there is no authority save from God, and those that exist are ordered by God: so that he that sets himself against the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those that resist shall receive judgment for themselves. For rulers are not a fear for the good work but for the evil. Dost thou wish then not to be afraid of the authority? Do good, and thou shalt have praise from it; for it is God's servant to thee for good; but if thou do evil, fear; for not in vain doth it wear the sword; for it is God's servant, an avenger for wrath to him that does evil. Wherefore [it is] needful to be subject not only on account of wrath but also on account of conscience. For on this account ye pay tribute also; for they are God's ministers attending continually to this very thing." (Ver. 1-6.)

The holy wisdom of the exhortation is as worthy of God, as the suitability of all that is taught is apparent for those who, though not of the world, yet have relative duties in it, as they wait for the Lord and are called to do the will of God meanwhile. By a gradual transition we are brought from not avenging ourselves, and overcoming evil with good, as becomes the children of God, to our relation to the authorities in the world whose office it is to avenge evil, punishing evil-doers, and praising those that do well. It was pre-eminently in place from the apostle writing to the saints in the great metropolis of the Gentile world, imperial Rome. No otherwise had the apostle of the circumcision exhorted the christian Jews scattered over the East. The falsehood, the folly, the impurity, the abominations of the Gentiles would naturally expose those who mingled their idolatries with the civil power to find the latter jeoparded when souls discerned and rejected the former in the light of Christ. Hence the exceeding moment of pressing the place which worldly authority should have in the conscience of the saints from among either Jews or Gentiles as of God, spite of the heathenism of those who were in possession of it. "Let every soul" is more comprehensive (and I cannot doubt so intended of the Spirit) than every saint. No position exempts. The household too ought to feel it, children or other dependent relations and servants, as well as believers. It is laid down purposely in the broadest terms: compare Romans 2:9. If the verb be regarded as in the middle voice, it would express the willingness of the subjection so much the more strongly: just as the other side, "he that sets himself against," is seen in verse 3.

Again, "authorities in power" (ἐξουσίαις ὑπερεχούσαις) is an expression that embraces every form of governing power, monarchical, aristocratic, or republican. All cavil on this score is therefore foreclosed. The Spirit insists not merely on the divine right of kings but that "there is no authority except from God." Nor is there an excuse on this plea for change; yet if a revolution should overthrow one form and set up another, the Christian's duty is plain: "those that exist are ordained by God." His interests are elsewhere, are heavenly, are in Christ; his responsibility is to acknowledge what is in power as a fact, trusting God as to the consequences and in no case behaving as a partisan. Never is he warranted in setting himself up against the authority as such; for this were to resist the ordinances of God, and those that resist shall receive judgment for themselves. For it is by no means "damnation," but "sentence," or the charge for which he is condemned. Scripture is ever sober, as the apostle said he was, for our sakes: if he were ecstatic, it was for God, as it might well be. Other scriptures show that, where the authority demands that which is offensive to Him, as for instance that an apostle should speak no more of Jesus or that a Christian should sacrifice to an idol or an emperor, we must obey God rather than man, but suffering, not resisting, if we cannot quietly leave the scene of persecution. For it is evident that it is impossible to plead God's authority for obeying a command which dishonours and denies Him. Every relation has its limits in conduct which virtually nullifies it; and that is a requirement which undermines its own authority by antagonism to Him who set it up. But Calvin seems to speak unwarrantably when he goes so far as to say that tyrannies are not an ordained government; and those who listened to him or shared his thoughts have proved that they did not count it beneath Christians to take an active part in overthrowing what they considered tyrannical.

It is a wholly inadequate apprehension to regard the magistrate on the side of man only. Not that he may not be chosen in ever so various a form by man, but that he is God's servant, as here repeatedly said. He is His servant for good, not for evil. But if you practise evil, what then? Fear; for not in vain does he wear the sword; for he is God's servant, an avenger for wrath to him that does evil. To see God in the magistrate brings in conscience. Wherefore one must need be subject not only on account of wrath (this would be merely a question of consequences from man), but also on account of conscience. "For on this account also ye pay tribute." This is connected with the foregoing exhortation as to magistrates, and prepares the way for more general relationships in the world. "For they are God's ministers [or officers], attending diligently unto this very thing." Thus they are designated God's διάκονοι and also His λειτουργοί, the one as doing the work prescribed to them in keeping the order of the world in obedience to the laws, the other as public functionaries or officially appointed to it. The payment of φόρος was for the administation of government, a tribute or tax on persons or property or both, as τέλος was on merchandize and therefore fairly translated "custom." Hence the apostle (ver. 7) exhorts, "Render to all their dues, tribute to whom tribute, custom to whom custom, fear to whom fear, honour to whom honour." The greater and the lesser are thus taken in, each in its just measure; which the Christian can heartily say, inasmuch as he is entitled to acknowledge God in all without seeking anything for himself. For we are here occupied with what is of God in the repression of evil, and hence external to the proper sphere of christian life, save as honouring God in every respect,

(V. 1). Already we have been told not to be conformed to the world, marked, as it is, by lust and pride, but, by the renewing of the mind, to exhibit a character that is in entire contrast to the man of the world. Nevertheless, the Christian is to recognise that government has been established in the world, and that the authority to govern is from God. This government was instituted after the flood, when Noah was definitely told that "Whoso sheds man's blood by man shall his blood be shed" (Gen. 9:6).

It is important to see the bearing of this Scripture. It definitely asserts that the authority to govern has been given by God. It does not say that the particular individuals who exercise the authority are of God, or that the way they may use their authority is of God. Those who exercise authority may be, and often are, thoroughly wicked men, who may abuse the power for their own ends. The fact, however, remains, that the authority they wield had been instituted of God.

Recognising that authority to govern is an ordinance of God, the only right course for the believer is to submit to those in authority.