What is the significance of the city of Rome in the Bible?

"And it came to pass in those days that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus, that a census should be made of all the habitable world." Caesar Augustine was the then Emperor of Rome, the last human kingdom of Daniel. Even the Holy Land was put in subjection to these imperial powers, and Caesar used his power and marked it in this that he demanded the presence of every man in his own city, as if all belonged to him. It was a testimony to the total subjection of the habitable world" 43to himself, not to Christ. This, indeed, will in due time be according to God, the fruit of His own power, when Jesus is manifestly exalted and God's direct power is vested in His hands, Who, being Himself a Divine Person as well as man, will thus exercise all the power as man, yet without derogating in the smallest degree from the rights and authority of God, yea, displaying them gloriously before the world, as He has already established them before God and, to faith, in the cross.

We have an account of this great change in the prophet Daniel (Dan. 2), "Thou, O king, art a king of kings; for the God of heaven hath given thee a kingdom, power, and strength, and glory. And wheresoever the children of men dwell, the beasts of the field, and the fowls of the heaven, hath he given into thine hand, and hath made thee ruler over them all. Thou art this head of gold." The times of the Gentiles begin here. The power which was thus bestowed on the Babylonish king, descended to the Medes and Persians; from thence it passed into the hands of the Greeks, and then to the Romans, the last kingdom represented by the image. The Roman empire, though after a while it was broken up into a number of separate kingdoms, continued its name in these kingdoms, and will continue it till the coming of the Lord. It is by this power that the Jews have been so fearfully wasted and oppressed. At the end of their seventy years' captivity a portion of the Jews returned to Jerusalem, but they were mere tributaries of the Persian king, they never afterwards had any independent government of their own. They were under the Roman yoke when Christ appeared amongst them, and they could not put their Messiah to death without the consent of the Roman governor, and the assistance of Roman soldiers. A second time their city and temple were destroyed by the Gentiles, and the Saviour Himself declared that Jerusalem should be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled. Luke 21:24.

The historical references here to the death of John the Baptist by Herod, bring in the subject of the civil government of the Holy Land at the time of our Lord. The people and country were tributary to Rome, that Western power which had then but recently assumed absolute supremacy in the political world. This subjection was not a surprise to those in Israel who had drunk of the spirit of prophecy. The Roman Empire was prefigured in the Image-vision of Nebuchadnezzar (Dan. 2), the "iron" government being the fourth in order of succession of the Gentile empires there portrayed. Daniel also saw it in prophetic vision under the figure of the fourth beast, terrible and powerful "with great iron teeth (Dan. 7:7).

In the New Testament history we find this "iron" rule in exercise at the time of the birth of Christ. Caesar Augustus issued a decree that "all the world should be taxed," or enrolled (Luke 2:1). In obedience to this edict Joseph and Mary, lineal descendants of the royal line of David, went up submissively from Nazareth in Galilee to Bethlehem in Judea. The position of servitude in which the chosen people stood to the great Empire is further shown by the circulation in their midst of the Roman currency in which they paid taxes to their over-lords (Luke 20:19-26).

It was in the days of this fourth Gentile monarchy, that the Lord Jesus Christ appeared in humiliation on the earth. Judea was then a Roman province, as was evinced by Caesar's image and superscription appearing on the coins. The power to inflict capital punishment seems to have resided in the Roman governor alone. Hence, the Jews were unable, except by his consent, to compass the death of the Holy and the Just One, who delivered Himself, and was delivered of God into their hands. The Roman empire thus partook with the Jewish people in the awful guilt of rejecting and crucifying the Prince of life. And should it be urged by any, that Pontius Pilate was but a subordinate agent and representative of the imperial power; the mournful answer is at hand, that the imperial power itself did afterwards ratify most fully the deed of its representative, by shedding torrents of christian blood.

At the Babylonish captivity, God severed the principle of earthly rule from that of His call, transferring the former to the Gentiles. The four great empires appeared in succession, as Daniel and other inspired writers predicted and attested. The last, or Roman empire, bore sway, as is notorious, when our Lord was born and died; and God began to call His church, chosen from Jews and Gentiles, as one body here below. But it is clear and certain, from the Acts of the Apostles and the rest of the New Testament, that the church in no way interfered with the government of the earth, which God had placed in the hands of magistrates. They had, no doubt, to hear and to bear the reproach of turning the world upside down, and of doing contrary to the decrees of Caesar; but it was false. Christ's kingdom is not of this world. They knew it, they had it, and they did not want another. They remembered His own glowing words about them: "They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world"; and they waited for Him from heaven, assured that those who suffer shall also reign with Him. As they never resisted the authorities by force, so they sought in their teachings to uphold, not to weaken, the just place which God of old had assigned them. Hence St. Paul thus addressed the believers in the imperial city: "Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever, therefore, resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation" (rather judgment, as also in 1 Cor. 11:29, where the context is decisively against the idea of "damnation"). "For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same; for he is the 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 the minister of God, a revenger [or avenger] to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil. Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake,'' etc. (Rom. 13). The reigning emperor was a pagan and a persecutor; but clearly that was not the question. The language of the Spirit is so framed as to exclude cavil, founded either on the profession or the practice of the ruler. "There is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God." What can be conceived more definite on the one hand, more comprehensive on the other? What more opposed to revolutionary movement? It was most wholesome; just in the right place and time. For the Jews were then turbulent, and the Christians were obnoxious in the extreme to the ruling powers. It seems probable that some at Rome, from old Jewish associations, found it hard to own and respect, as of God, rulers whom they saw sunken in the spiritual and moral degradations of heathenism. Under such circumstances, if under any, one might have supposed à priori that God might have revoked the grant of power from its Gentile holders, if He did not transfer it to the church. But no! The door is closed against every excuse. "The powers that be are ordained of God."

This was evidently then the corrected and proper scope of Paul's allotted sphere: Jerusalem was outside it. For Peter had been entrusted with the gospel of the circumcision, as Paul was, beyond all controversy, with that of the uncircumcision, under which came Rome as the then metropolis of the world. Thither the apostle was to go, not free but in bonds, a prisoner, as suited the Lord, whilst it was a part of His moral government because he would go to Jerusalem. The greatest representative of the gospel was to enter Rome in a chain!

Has the gospel ever been otherwise at Rome? It is not that God had not work there already done. Many souls there were before this, calling on the name of the Lord, both Jews and Gentiles, as the Epistle to the Romans lets us see, but the great witness of the gospel was to enter Rome as a prisoner. If released afterwards, he returned, a prisoner again, to die at Rome for Christ. It was indeed a solemn type, as foreshadowing what Rome would ever prove to the gospel of God.

Our apostle, when brought to Rome, declares (upon the manifestation of unbelief among the Jews, which we have pointed out) that the salvation of God is sent to the Gentiles; and he dwells two whole years in the house he had hired, receiving those who came to him (for he had not liberty to go to them) preaching the kingdom of God and those things which concerned the Lord Jesus, with all boldness, no man forbidding him. And here the history is ended of this precious servant of God, beloved and honoured by his Master, a prisoner in that Rome which, as head of the fourth empire, was to be the seat of opposition among the Gentiles, as Jerusalem of opposition among the Jews, to the kingdom and to the glory of Christ. The time for the full manifestation of that opposition was not yet come; but the minister of the assembly and of the gospel of glory is a prisoner there. It is thus that Rome begins its history in connection with the gospel that the apostle preached. Nevertheless God was with him.

At the same time, whatever may have been the subsequent labours of the apostle (if there were any the Holy Ghost does not make mention of them: Paul sees the Jews in his own house, and receives all who come to him; but) the page of the Spirit's history closes here. This history is ended. The apostolic mission to the Gentiles in connection with the founding of the assembly is concluded. Rome is but the prison of the apostle of the truth, to whom the truth had been committed. Jerusalem rejects him, Rome imprisons him and puts him to death as it had done to Jesus, whom the blessed apostle had to resemble in this also according to his desire in Philippians 3; for Christ and conformity to Him was his only object. It was given him to find this conformity in his service, as it was so strongly in his heart and soul, with the necessary difference between a ministry which was not to break the bruised reed nor lift up its voice in the street, and one which in testimony was to bring forth judgment to the Gentiles.

The mission of the twelve to the Gentiles, going out from Jerusalem (Matt. 28), never took place, so far as any record of it by the Holy Ghost goes. Jerusalem detained them. They did not even go over the cities of Israel. The ministry of the circumcision was given to Peter, that of the Gentiles to Paul in connection with the doctrine of the assembly and of a glorious Christ — a Christ whom he no longer knew after the flesh. Jerusalem, to which the apostle was drawn by his affection, rejected both him and his mission. His ministry to the Gentiles, so far as the free effect of the power of the Spirit, ended likewise. Ecclesiastical history may perhaps tell us more; nevertheless God has taken care to bury it in profound darkness Nothing farther is owned by the Spirit. We hear no more of the apostles at Jerusalem; and Rome, as we have seen, had none, so far as the Holy Ghost informs us, excepting that the apostle of the Gentiles was a prisoner there and finally put to death. Man has failed everywhere on earth. The religious and political centres of the world — centres, according to God, as to the earth — have rejected the testimony, and put the testifier to death; but the result has been that Heaven has maintained its rights inviolate and in their absolute purity. The assembly the true heavenly and eternal metropolis of glory and of the ways of God — the assembly which had its place in the counsels of God before the world was — the assembly which answers to His heart in grace as united to Christ in glory — remains the object of faith. It is revealed according to the mind of God, and perfectly such as it is in His mind, until, as the heavenly Jerusalem, it shall be manifested in glory, in connection with the accomplishment of the ways of God on the earth, in the re-establishment of Jerusalem as the centre of His earthly dealings in grace, His throne, His metropolis in the midst even of the Gentiles, and in the disappearance even of Gentile power, the seat and centre of which was Rome.

The last division of the Acts is plainly of a very different character from those before it. The progress of the gospel is over; the chief evangelist, the apostle to whom is committed the whole Gentile field, is shut up in prison, not (as far as the history given to us goes) to escape from it again, whatever partial relief might be obtained. Rome, the capital of the world, shows herself, only less bitterly, alas, than Israel, the enemy of God and of His grace. The word of God is indeed not bound; it is His word who is over all, and who is with it; but its ministers are confessors, and its witnesses are martyrs. There is no conversion of the world, nor does it change its prince; and it is prophetic of the future of Christendom itself the welcome that Rome extends to Paul and to his gospel, the fullest chords of whose music sound from the place of his captivity.

Jerusalem is in the foreground in this Book, for the beginning was to be in Jerusalem "to the Jew first." The end of the Book takes us to Rome, and we see the great Apostle a prisoner there, a most significant, prophetic circumstance.