THE SOVEREIGNTY OF "CESAR" AND THE SOVEREIGNTY OF CHRIST.
"The Gospel obliges the recognition of Jesus Christ as Lord of all parcels and spheres of life, both social and personal, both internal and external, both public and private"
Today we have a similar battle, although many Christians do not realize it. The modern State assumes more "catholic", universal, total and absolute characteristics every day. It demands every day more power and more capacity to control its subjects. The same freedom, human rights, are things that the modern State assumes its prerogative to grant or deny. He interprets them, not as gifts of God rooted in creation, but as favors granted by the State. Meanwhile, the Christian faith is being reduced not only to a personal question but to a private, individual aspect of existence with little social, legal, moral repercussions, etc. The law, ethics, currents of thought and conduct, norms, fashions and ways of life, have ceased to be inspired by Christian principles. Legislation and administration are inspired by other sources, once Christianity has been reduced to a private and even exotic issue of some individuals. This opens the way to the omnipotent State that gradually extends its dominion in more spheres of existence. It assumes progressively an increasingly absolute sovereignty over society and over consciousness.
Recall that some of the best Roman emperors were the worst persecutors of the Christian faith. The more faithful they were to Rome's hegemonic vocation, the more tenaciously they persecuted the Church.
Sometimes, today, it is also the "best humanists", certain "good rulers" who do the most damage to Christianity for the sake of an apparent tolerance inspired by moral relativism and a secularizing perspective of life. This "humanism" grants Christianity the right to personal convictions and even private worship, but as long as it does not proclaim what Cromwell and the Puritans called "the royal rights of Jesus Christ, Lord and Sovereign" over every area of life and of thought. That is to say: provided that he gives these rights to Caesar.
"Antinomianism" is currently not only a heresy practiced by many believers but a principle that these believers even now apply to non-believers. According to them, the law of God has no function to perform.
"We live under grace, not under the law," they exclaim. And they twist the meaning of this text of Paul once again. What we really do is deny God's sovereignty-his norms, his principles, his law-by not allowing his Word to illuminate every sphere of existence. Forgetting that God, as Creator, has dominion and right over all his creatures and over all the created structures. But many Christians have resigned their responsibilities to make known the norms of the Word for the lives of people and peoples. Meanwhile, pedagogy, law, sociology and many other branches of modern knowledge are motivated by clearly anti-Christian proposals. Many Christians do not seem to understand the conflict of sovereignty that we have raised and, more serious still, some even want to justify the pretensions of the State and their own blindness with a bad theology.
There are believers today who claim to believe in the Bible, from the first to the last of its pages, but at the same time insist that it is not their business to take positions against abortion, homosexuality, euthanasia, etc., because , in doing so, they would fall into the so-called "social gospel." The gospel of these Christians has to do only with the salvation of "souls." Only a part of the personality, the "spiritual" element, is of interest to the Christian message, according to this mentality. The practical result is that the Christian faith is thus reduced to a status similar to that which ancient Rome granted to paganism at that time in its multiple manifestations: a private cult, for private needs and for certain private nuclei of society. Implicitly, the lordship of Christ over all the parcels of existence is thus denied and the catholicity of his message hindered.
If these Christians had lived in the first centuries they would not have been persecuted by Roman law. We can be convinced of this, because they would not have given reasons to be branded as seditious or traitors. They would not have challenged "Mr. Caesar" nor their Catholic jurisdiction over consciences and lives, since the lordship of Christ is reserved for the narrow scope of the "soul" and its universality is a theoretical principle that only at the end of time will it make sense according to they. With this kind of reasoning and with this theology, no Empire, no State, is bothered by the presence of Christians who sing hymns to the Lord Jesus Christ, but who do not have the concern to express this lordship in the different spheres of life and for whom the mandate to be "salt and light in the world" is contemplated with myopic and narrow vision.
"Christians will be supported to the extent that their influence does not cross the thresholds of their chapels and their criteria do not affect public life, customs and society at all"
The secularizing humanism of our century tells us that we do not have to impose Christian norms, but what it really means is that we are not even allowed by public opinion to propose such norms in fair competition with other ideologies and currents of thought. thought. Meanwhile, materialism, secularism and the other "isms" of modern idolatry are very careful to impose their own criteria through the control exercised over the media and cultural and political life. The tolerance for this new paganism is similar to the tolerance of the old Roman Empire: Christians will be supported to the extent that their influence does not cross the thresholds of their chapels and their criteria do not affect public life, customs and the society. Meanwhile, there will be ridicule, mockery and contempt for values whose ultimate origin is the Bible. Christians are invited to live schizophrenically: with a moral for the chapel and another for the street, with principles for individual life and others for the social, antagonistically estranged the private and the public. And, what is worse, unlike the Christians of the first centuries, today we have believers who conform to these dichotomies, and even manuals of pseudo-doctrine that try to justify them.
NOTHING TO LEARN FROM JOHN THE BAPTIST ?.
In a Bible study meeting it was being considered the life and testimony of John the Baptist, when someone dropped this question: Who would today be able to denounce personal sins against the law of God committed by some rulers, like John Did he know how to do it by confronting Herod in the name of the Lord?
Soon explanations were heard (?) To reassure the conscience: "It is not the Church's task to meddle with the private lives of politicians," "Not with the public;" "The attitude of the Baptist is explained because he was still living under the old dispensation ...;" "Under the Israelite theocracy it was permissible to denounce the authorities in the name of God, but not in the modern democracies that are non-denominational ...;" "Provided an official fulfills his public duties, Christians have no right to delve into his private life ...;" "We are not under the law but under grace ...;" "The separation between Church and State assumes that believers have to remain closed-mouthed, whatever the moral state of their environment and of the nation ...," etc.
There were even more "reasons" that would be tedious to list here. For every taste. However, they all agreed on a common denominator: dualism, dichotomies as axes of their thinking; the divisions of clear Gnostic rather than Biblical origin to avoid the implications of the lordship of Christ for the here and now of our pilgrimage. There is a certain impotence to think faith globally and even more to live it integrally in the totality of areas of responsibility of everyday existence.
Certainly, those who with their excuses tried to say that John the Baptist does not have, today, anything to teach us, they would not have been persecuted by the Roman Empire. Because when they confess that Jesus Christ is "the Lord, to the glory of God the Father" (Phil 1:11), they imply that this lordship is neither for "all language" nor for the present, but only a manifestation of inner piety , sterile and private, to be whispered in the corner of the chapel ...
We can be sure of that. Not even Nero would have bothered these Christians.