Category: Jesus

A Review of Principalities Powers and Allegiances: Submission in Enemy Territory

Untangling submission to authority and allegiance to God

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A friend posted an glowing endorsement of the book, Principalities Powers and Allegiances, by Matt Mouzakis & Will Ryan, that intrigues me because the subject is a topic I have spent some time considering and writing about. The book is an exegesis of biblical passages that have posed challenges to modern Christians like myself: Romans 13:1-7 and 1 Peter 2:11-17.

These passages instruct Christians to submit to earthly authorities “for the Lord’s sake” (1 Peter 2:13). Mouzakis and Ryan provide background and Scriptural insight that sheds some fresh light on these passages. It is not new light. In fact, it is ancient light that was likely understood by the original readers of those words, but which has been lost in the centuries since that time.

I do not have the book, but I was curious because of my own interest in the tension between faithful adherence to the Gospel and submission to governing authorities, so I asked Google Gemini for a summary of the book. More specifically, I asked for a summary of the exegesis of Romans 13:1-7 for comparison to my own exegesis. (How Should the Church Act Regarding Authority? and more recently Submitting to Authority For the Lord’s Sake Like Peter, Paul, and Jesus Did)

The exegesis of Romans 13:1-7 offered by Mouzakis and Ryan is a departure from modern reading that views government as God’s benevolent institution for all time. They argue that the passage must be read through the lens of the Deuteronomy 32 worldview and the larger narrative of sin and God’s judgment in the book of Romans.

The Deuteronomy 32 worldview, in a nutshell, is that Yahweh, is the sole supreme Deity, and that the gods of the other nations are lesser, created spiritual beings (“sons of God” or elohim). It pulls from the judgment following the Tower of Babel that included the scattering of the people:

“When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance,
    when he divided mankind,
he fixed the borders of the peoples
    according to the number of the sons of God.”

(Deut. 32:8)(ESV)

The “sons of God” are sometimes translated “sons of Israel”, but Israel was not yet a nation at that time. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (whose name was changed to Israel) from which God formed His people were not yet born. God called Abraham out from among the nations and formed a people of God, the nation of Israel, separate and apart from the nations. Thus, Jews identified only two sets of people: the Jews and the Gentiles.

The Deuteronomy 32 worldview notes that the “sons of God” (the elohim) rebelled. They demanded the worship that belonged only to Yahweh, and they lead the nations into idolatry and violence. They are the principalities and powers that Paul speaks of who rule the “world system.” Jesus defeated those principalities and powers by his life, death, and resurrection (Colossians 2:15), broke down the dividing wall between Jews and Gentiles (Ephesians 2:14), and established his Church for the purpose of reclaiming the nations for the Kingdom of God.

Romans 13 needs to be read in the context of the sweep and arc of the story of God and what He is doing in space and time. Here are the key points of their specific interpretation of Romans 13:

1. The Context:

From Handing Over to Submission

The authors connect Romans 13 directly to Romans 1:21-23, where Paul describes God “handing over” (paradidomi) humanity to the consequences of their idolatry. In the Deuteronomy 32 worldview, this “handing over” included disinheriting the nations and appointing elohim (spiritual beings) to govern them.

The Problematic Authorities:

By the time of the New Testament, these spiritual beings—the principalities and powers—had fallen, becoming demonic forces that oppose God. When humanity rejects God, they are handed over to the “world” and to these spiritual powers, which are associated with the consequences of “sin and death.”

The Assertion:

The Roman government (specifically the Empire under Nero in the 1st Century) is viewed as aligned with these demonic forces. Paul’s message is that because Christians serve KING JESUS, they are no longer slaves to these demonic forces, even while living under their political rule.

2. The Nature of “The Authorities”

The Greek word used for “authorities” in Romans 13:1 is exousiai, which refers both to human governing authorities and spiritual powers (seen in Ephesians 6:12). Mouzakis and Ryan contend that Paul is deliberately using this ambiguous term to encompass the reality that earthly governments are influenced by unseen spiritual powers.

When Paul says the authorities are “instituted by God,” he does not mean God approves or blesses their actions. Rather, God established them as the temporary framework of consequences and judgment that the world is subjected to—a framework that God ultimately controls in his sovereignly.

3. The Ruler as “God’s Servant”

The authors evaluate the terms used for the governing official: leitourgos (minister/servant, v. 6) and diakonos (servant/minister, v. 4).

A Tool of Wrath:

The ruler is called both “God’s servant for good” and an “avenger who carries out God’s wrath” (v.4)(ESV). This wrath is seen not necessarily as God’s positive blessing on good governance, but as the execution of the consequences already outlined in Romans 1—the judgment of being “handed over” to a system that operates by the sword. the “good” is the carrying out of God’s purposes. The government’s function is to maintain basic civic order and punish wrongdoers, which is a necessary restraint in a fallen world, but the government itself is not necessarily acting righteously.

Consistent with this, we can find multiple times in Scripture where unjust nations are identified as servants of God. Isaiah identifies Assyria as the “the rod of my anger, in whose hand is the club of my wrath!” even as Isaiah pronounces, Woe to the Assyrian!” (Is. 10:5-6) Jeremiah called the Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar, God’s servant. (Jer.25:9 & 27:6) to bring God’s judgment.

The Non-Endorsement:

The term leitourgos neutral. It refers to public servants, generally. It means a tool or agent of God, like Assyria and Babylon were to accomplish God’s purposes in exiling his people. It is not an endorsement of them as God’s representative.

4. Allegiance vs. Submission

The most crucial distinction is between submission and allegiance:

Allegiance is to Christ:

The Christian’s primary and ultimate loyalty is to Jesus and the Kingdom of God. Our allegiance (our citizenship in the kingdom of God) made the Christian community a rival kingdom to the Roman Empire. That is why Christians were viewed with suspicion and called “atheists” (because they didn’t bow to Caesar and they didn’t worship the Roman pantheon of gods). Jesus was crucified, in part, because he was perceived to claim to be the King of the Jews, though his kingdom is not of this world.

Submission is Tactical:

The command to “be subject” (hypotassō) is a call for voluntary, orderly yielding to maintain peace, prevent anarchy, and avoid creating unnecessary offense that would hinder the spread of the Gospel. Peter says to submit “for the Lord’s sake”, so that the Gospel message is not hindered. It is an act of discipleship lived out in enemy territory.

Taxes and Honor:

Paul’s only specific instruction about submitting to the governing authorities is to “pay to all what is owed them” (v.7), including taxes. He echoed Jesus in this who told us to pay unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and to his disciples to pay the Temple tax. It is a call to fulfill one’s basic civic duty (giving to Caesar what bears Caesar’s image). However, the ultimate message is a remez (a subtle link or hint) to Jesus’s teaching to give yourself wholly to God because you bear His image.

In summary, for Mouzakis and Ryan, Romans 13 is not a command for blind obedience to the state, but a strategic directive for Kingdom citizens to live non-violently and orderly in a world ruled by lesser, fallen powers, while reserving ultimate worship and allegiance for King Jesus.

If you are interested in what the authors have to say about the book, this video features Dr. Matt Mouzakis discussing the process of writing the book and exploring its underlying theological themes in a conversation about writing worship music. Write Biblically Accurate Songs For The Church with Dr. Matt Mouzakis

If you want to read what I have written about the tension between submission to authority and allegiance to God, see How Should the Church Act Regarding Authority? and more recently Submitting to Authority For the Lord’s Sake Like Peter, Paul, and Jesus Did.

Did AI do a good job summarizing the book? I have added to the AI summary I obtained. Did “we” do a good job? If you have read the book, please let me know.

If this helped you, made you curious, or even if you disagree, please feel free to start a conversation in the comments.

An Exploration of God’s Hiddenness in the Bible

The Bible on the hiddenness of God

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Divine hiddenness is an argument suggesting that God does not exist. According to J.L. Schellenberg, if a perfectly loving God exists, He would desire a genuine relationship with every person He creates. A loving relationship requires, at minimum, awareness that God exists, so a perfectly loving God would make Himself known. Some sincere and willing people who want to know God are unable to find sufficient evidence that He exists to believe in Him. Therefore, either God does not exist or He is not perfectly loving.

I don’t buy it. I think the argument is flawed, but other people have provided robust responses to this argument, so I am not going to attempt to provide a counter argument here. I am also unconvinced that arguments are the best way to achieve understanding.

On that ground, I am intrigued by the hiddenness of God, and I am intrigued that the Bible is forthright about the hiddenness of God. The Prophet Isaiah says it plainly: “Truly, you are a God who hides himself, O God of Israel, the Savior.” (Is. 45:15)

The entire Book of Job is about God’s hiddenness. Job assumed that God existed and had blessed him until he lost everything. When Job sought God in the desperation of his circumstances, he lamented, “Behold, I go forward, but he is not there, and backward, but I do not perceive him… I cannot behold him.” (Job 23:8-9)

David, who is held up in the Bible as a man after God’s own heart, lamented the hiddenness of God at various times in his life: “Why, O LORD, do you stand far away? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?” (Psalm 10:1); “How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?” (Ps. 13:1); and “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?… I cry by day, but you do not answer.” (Ps. 22:1-2)

Those last words were famously echoed by Jesus on the cross. Imagine, Jesus, who demonstrated and expressed the deepest and most intimate relationship with the Father, experiencing the utter absence of God at the moment of his greatest need.

I saw early in a world religion class in college when I wasn’t a believer that the Bible purports to be about the unfolding story of God’s encounter and revelation of who God is to mankind. Elsewhere, I have written about how God found in Abram a man who was able to grasp that the God of the universe is not like the gods of the provincial tribes and nations with which Abram was familiar. (For example, Abraham, Isaac and Paradigm Shift; and The Story of Abraham and Isaac Revisited: Introduction)

The revelation of God unfolded slowly as God needed to dispel notions of divine arbitrariness, capriciousness, brutality, and uncaring of the gods that Abram and ancient humanity understood. The gods of human imagination are no gods at all, and God is noting like ancient Near Easterners imagined.

While it is true that God is completely OTHER, the true God who made the heavens and the earth desires the benefit of and reciprocal relationship with the pinnacle of His creation. How does a God who is so completely OTHER than His creation communication Himself?

Consider a God who could make our universe with its vastness and detailed complexity down to the minutia of the precise intricacy of living cells and the unseeable building blocks of the physical world, like neutrinos, that are so small they can pass through your body and the core of the earth without hitting another particle. How does such a God who created such a world reveal Himself to finite creatures who live on a tiny planet in a tiny solar system among more stars, planets, and whole solar systems than such a creature can even imagine – how does such a God reveal himself to delicate, ephemeral creatures with limited perspective?

Continue reading “An Exploration of God’s Hiddenness in the Bible” →

Waiting for the Fullness of Time – the Day of the Lord

What if the Day of the Lord, the Second Coming, is not fixed?

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Marty Solomon makes some bold statements in the 2nd episode of Season 5 of the BEMA Podcast (Episode 192, Telling a Story) (starting about 20 minutes in). He says the early Christians were not wrong to believe the return of Christ was imminent. He believes Christ’s return actually was imminent (and still is) – if only the time was right

Solomon basically believes that Jesus might have returned within a generation or two of his death if the right things developed. He believes that the date was not and is not fixed. This is not how I have viewed it nor how I believe most people view the return of Jesus.

I have always assumed that God has fixed a date for the return of Jesus. It seems to me that this is what is generally taught or assumed. This is why we struggle with Jesus saying no one knows the hour or day of his return – not even Jesus. This is why we wrestle with the message of the imminent return of Jesus that bleeds through the New Testament.

Jesus didn’t return, so can it be possible that they were wrong about that? If they were wrong about that, what else are they wrong about?

Marty Solomon says they were not wrong about the potential, imminent return of Jesus. It could have happened, if only the time was right, if only the right things happened, if only the circumstances were such that his return was appropriate.

This is a radically different view than what I have assumed, but I was intrigued by the thought of it. As I mulled it over, I began to see some some things, and that inspires my writing today.

Continue reading “Waiting for the Fullness of Time – the Day of the Lord” →

Is the American Church a House Divided Against Itself?

Whether God for us or against us is the wrong question.

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I have yet to find my equilibrium after the Charlie Kirk killing. I didn’t know Charlie Kirk. I didn’t follow him. I heard him speak one time at an event in which Ravi Zacharias was the keynote speaker, but I never watched, or listened, or read anything from Charlie Kirk online. I didn’t agree with his Republican apologetic, though I couldn’t have identified anything Charlie Kirk specifically said before his death.

Since his death, I have heard and read testimony of his love for Jesus. His wife, Erika, publicly forgave his killer in an ultimate act of sacrificial obedience to Jesus.

Charlie Kirk’s legacy will always be that of a follower of Jesus and a staunch Republican, friend and defender of Donald Trump, who maintained political views opposed to mine.

I am a born again Christian. I believe in the death of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of my sins and his resurrection from the dead. I believe the Bible is the word of God and His revelation to mankind. I read the Bible daily. I believe there is only one path to God, and that is through Jesus Christ. I go to church every Sunday, and I am involved in Wednesday evening and Saturday morning Bible studies.

I have been a Christian for 45 years. The fundamentals of my faith have not changed in that time, but I have gone down some side roads from which I had to retreat back to a more orthodox faith. I was tempted by the prosperity gospel, and I once embraced an Americanized Christianity verging on idolatry.

Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever. God has not changed during my life (or at any time since the foundation of the earth), but I have changed often, as I have had to adjust my thinking, confess my sin, and allow my mind to be transformed by God’s Word and the influence of the Holy Spirit in my life.

I am a work in progress, of course. I have yet to arrive at any final destination, but I look forward with yearning for the day when I see Him face to face, and I will know as I am fully known!

I used to believe that all true Christians should (and therefore must) believe all of the same things about everything. That makes sense in a rationalistic way because we all have the same Holy Spirit, and we all read the same Bible, so we all should believe exactly the same things about everything. Right?

Continue reading “Is the American Church a House Divided Against Itself?” →

Did Jesus So Judge the World that He Came into the World to Condemn It?

When Jesus called us to follow him, he called us to adopt his posture toward the world.

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I am writing today about something I have written before, but I think it bears repeating. I have not stopped thinking about it since these words from Paul virtually leapt off the page when I read them a few years ago:

“What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside.”

1 Corinthians 5:12-13 (emphasis added)

How many times had I glossed over those words without really seeing them? Did he really mean that? We are not to judge people outside the church? Isn’t that exactly what we do?

I have kept going back to Paul’s admonition often since that day. I didn’t see it right away, but I eventually noticed that Paul echoed the very words of Jesus in that statement: Jesus said,

“If anyone hears my words but does not keep them, I do not judge that person. For I did not come to judge the world, but to save the world. There is a judge for the one who rejects me and does not accept my words; the very words I have spoken will condemn them at the last day.”

JOhn 12:47-48 (emphasis added)

Elsewhere, Jesus said, “God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” (John 3:17)

If Jesus bids us to follow him, should we not adopt the same posture toward the world? It is the same posture Paul admonished the Corinthians to model toward those outside the Church: Do not judge them because they have a judge! (And it isn’t us!)

Paul

1 Corinthians 5:12-13

What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church?

God will judge those outside

Jesus

John 12:47-48

I have not come to judge the world.

There is a judge for the one who rejects me.

When adopt the posture Jesus had toward the world and the posture Paul tells the church to adopt, we are freed up from the responsibility to judge so that we can love. Even if the world goes its own way, which it will, we can love the world. Even if the world hates us, we can still love the world.

We are free to preach good news to the poor, to give sight to the blind, to set the oppressed free, and to proclaim the favor of God to all who will receive Him. This was how Jesus characterized what he came to do when he read from the Isaiah scroll in his hometown synagogue, sat down, and said, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” (Luke 4: 21) This is our ministry also, if we will follow him.

We don’t have to be in the business of judging the world because the world has a Judge. We can leave that to God. In fact, it isn’t an option. It is God’s rightful place to judge, and it isn’t our place.

That means it isn’t up to us to make the world conform to the law of God. We are not responsible to require godly behavior and biblical morality from the world, and it isn’t our business to do that.

Rather, we are to love the world, though people in the world are yet sinners. We can do that because Jesus loved us and died for us while we were yet sinners.

“Are you not to judge those inside?” says Paul. The world has not subscribed to Jesus, but we have. Judgment begins in the house of God because Jesus counts on us to be the light and salt of the world. If we lose our flavor, we cannot be who God calls us to be.

Who among us were able to conform to the Law before Jesus? None of us! Which is why we needed him. We are saved by grace through faith, and not by anything we could do. The world, likewise, cannot conform to God’s law apart from Jesus. This is why the world needs a Savior: because it has a Judge.

Why, then, would we try to impose godly behavior and biblical morality on the world through human, legal means when the world is incapable of conforming to God’s law apart from Jesus?

Jesus sends us into the world as his ambassadors just as he came into the world: not to judge the world, because the world already has a judge. He sends us out as ambassadors not to condemn the world, but but to save it.

If we can adopt this posture toward the world that Jesus adopted and that Paul admonished, we can be unified in that purpose and calling of Jesus even in our own differences about how the world ought to operate. We can love each other as fellow ambassadors of Christ and give each other grace in the areas in which we disagree.

Our primary focus should be the purpose and focus of Jesus – not to condemn the world, but to save it by proclaiming good news to the poor, sight for the blind, freedom for the oppressed, and the favor of God’s love toward all who will receive Him. Everything else fades in light of that purpose and calling.

Jesus said, the world will know us by our love for each other. (John 13:35) Let us so live, then, that the world knows us for our love for one another and our love for the world that Jesus loved!