Lesson 54a Q 1 & 2

From verse one, question one, from verse one, what does subject unto, that's the King James Version, or in subjection to, in the New American Standard mean? So that's from verse one, every person, and this is the New American Standard, every person is being subjection to the governing authorities, where there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established for God. So I guess, first let's look at who does this verse apply to? What's that?

I don't think there is a wrong one right now. Yeah, you put a blank spot. You put a clear spot. Hey, Ralph. Ralph, not your mic. Nick can. Here we go. So who does this apply to? Everyone. Everyone. So is that everyone on the planet? Probably. Yes. It's universal. Okay. What's that? Every person. Every person. So does that mean non-believers too? Yes. Yes. How would this be directed at a non-believer? I think Newell says it's for believers. Yeah, that's when I was reading it, I thought everybody, and then reading Newell and then getting a thought about how would this apply to a non-believer? Well, they'd be disobedient in any way because that's sin. That's all they can do is sin. Yeah, why would they be under this, you know, and unfortunately, what are we seeing right now? Yeah, it's called a protest. Sin nature at work. Yeah, it's a protest, not a riot. It's a protest.

Well, it could be a combination of two. But, so that's, you know, when I read that and I was thinking everyone, it would be, and then I thought, well, why would a non-believer be under this? Why would a non-believer even be reading this book? Right. I mean, they aren't under this. They could care less. They don't know that the authority is set up by God.

Paul's writing to believers in this book, so this is applying to believers. Exactly. You know, this is a letter to the Romans, and this is, was it mainly a Jewish audience or a Gentile? Gentile. Gentile. It was a Gentile audience. So this is more the Gentiles, it wasn't like Jewish in the law, it was more towards the Gentile church in Rome.

And so, again, this one, you know, it doesn't apply to everyone, this applies to every believer. So when I first looked at it again, it was kind of, well, everybody would be under this. Well, but a non-believer has nothing to do with this, wouldn't know about it. He doesn't care whether the authority is from God or not. He wouldn't even think about that. So this applies to believers.

Getting back to the definition, what does subjection or insubjection, what does that mean? Courtney, I had a thought on, like, the end of chapter 12, it's talking about the believers living at peace with all people, and kind of the flow through Sodom and Gomorrah is this is a believer living at peace with the government.

Does that make sense? Exactly. You know, that's why I think I brought it up last week. Very good. I mean, we look at this, we become very myopic and look at very small sections of this. Remember, this was a long letter. one letter, and so it flows through. So, Miles is exactly right.

Remember what we all just went through in chapter 12, and we'll touch a little bit even on the next chapter with what's going on here, too. So, yeah, it's a flow-through about being at peace with all men, all the things turn, you know, vengeance is the Lord's. All these things flow through, and now we're under subjection to authority.

So, again, what is the definition? What would you say for subjection? What does that mean? To subject or in subjection? I was going to say, I don't think it can always mean obedience because there's a lot of things the government wants or requires that really, at least here, that really aren't something we can do. Good thought. Others? Am I still distorted? Yeah. Go ahead.

I think believers ought to be under the law or the magistrate that they find themselves under. I don't think there's a provision here for a believer to decide, well I don't like the government so I'm not going to submit myself to them. Because it's clear that whatever jurisdiction I live under it's ordained of God even though I may not agree with it. So...

I'm sorry, that term... Turn away ahead, but what is the word subject? Lesson under. What was that? Lesson under. Lesson under, okay. Any other? What was that? He's going to say to be under the authority of. Okay. And there's a no obedience factor. Yeah, we you're just opposite of what miles said Yeah, I didn't mean to be like I didn't mean to say like not yeah never obeying but I just said like it can't mean obey in all circumstances because there's certainly areas where the oh for sure depending on your situation or your government I mean We're going to get to that, but Miles, you're right. The way that this sentence is structured, it says that every believer is to, he himself, is to habitually put himself under the, he's to do it, put himself under the authority. So is it the same, well I'll get to this, you wish we'll see if subjection and obedience are the same.

I went to and I couldn't find actually the infamous Webster Dictionary so I had to go to the Oxford Dictionary. I know I'm feeling a little weird now using the Oxford Dictionary. for what subjection is. It's the action of subjecting a country or person to one's control, or the fact of being subjected. So, this violated all my rules of definition. That you use the word in the definition. So, I never liked that. So, is that the biblical definition of the word? Would that be what the Bible says subjection is? I think so. Listen under. What was that? Listen under. Yeah, listen under.

There's a priority there, though. So the scripture doesn't, it mentions this in what? Now we're in 13? Courtney, you got to watch both. There you go. There's a, there's a, there's a role there, right? Like, so is it God first, government second, government first, God second? I mean, how do you think about that? We'll get to that. I'm parsing this slowly but surely through the words because we'll get to all of those. Because your days are long in Alaska. You're just like dragging us out. And we're going to be at eight weeks. If I stayed up here, we'd be on this eight weeks. We got 24 hours of sunlight. I can go for hours. I can go for hours.

OK. So the Greek word is hupotasso, which from hupo meaning next, after, or under, and tasso, I arrange. And it means to arrange after, or to arrange under, or to place under in an orderly fashion. So does that help? Yeah. Would something along the lines of respect, like listen respectfully, Yeah, and we'll bring that up because we'll get the same word when it gets, well, in fact now. So, I guess if we put that word in, and I'll get back to that, Miles, with the definition the verse would read, we are placed under in an orderly fashion to the governing authorities.

I disagree, Courtney. I think it says that we're to place ourself under. Yeah, we are placed under. We place ourselves, it isn't that somebody does it to us. Right, if you get into the Greek and the action and all that, yeah, we are placing ourselves under. Yeah. So yeah, but we are placing ourselves under in an orderly fashion to the governing authorities. Right. So now that we're getting a little bit back miles, does subjection and obedience mean the same thing? Stunning silence. Now I was, give me one second to get back to this screen.

1 Peter 2.13 Submit yourselves for the Lord's sake to every human institution. That's an interesting thought, right? For the Lord's sake? We'll get to all of that, too. Oh, you're going to get to that? We'll get to all this. You guys are jumping ahead of all this.

I'm trying to slowly walk us through so we don't get to the big parts right away. Is it premature to talk about the fact that Subjection to the government authorities and the reason is that there's no authority except from God? You're getting way ahead. Am I really? Okay. Yep. I'm trying to walk us through because if we don't, these don't make sense. So, like I said, I want to break it up between subjection and obedience.

Are they the same thing? No. I don't think so. I don't think they are. Anybody says yes, they're the same? I mean, if you're talking to your child, do you say, oh, object, obedience and subjection are the same? I would, I don't, I'm anxious to hear where you're headed with this, Courtney, but I'm thinking about children and, and like applying that to the government. Subjection and obedience. What did I say? Did I say objection or obedience? I meant subjection and obedience. Obedience and subjection, yeah. Yes, obedience. I blew it. Obedience and subjection, are they the same?

I don't think so. Isn't it something that happens in public and the other one happens inside of you? I could be, can I be subjected to a governmental authority but not obey every command that they put out? Yeah, that's the point. Our subjection and obedience are the same. Yeah. So that, and we'll get to, you know, JD, what you were talking about, because it is different. So they're definitely different.

So, subjection, if you look at it with, you know, husbands and wives, it's to listen under. It's not as obedience, like a slave or something like that. When it talks about wives being subjection to your husband, it's to listen under, like we define the word. Obedience is a different one.

It's hoopakayo or yippeekayo. Hoopakayo is is used in the obedience of children rendered to their parents. So that's more of obedience, and that's in Ephesians 6, 1 and Colossians 3, 20. This refers to an obedience which springs from their sense of duty towards or dependence on parents. So, the same verb is used in servile obedience rendered by slaves to their masters. And that was in Ephesians 6, 5 and Colossians 3, 22.

They must obey by virtue of their subordinate position. So, again, there's quite a difference between being in subjection to and being obedient. So, we can't use those terms interchangeably. They're very, very different. And so to listen under versus obedience, which is being subordinate to or like a slave.

So, you got, JD, you got something? So, JD, does parental power go to things that are unlawful? Say that another way. Do my children have to obey me if I tell them that they have to do something that's not lawful? Yeah, so less than saying do you have if you tell them to go rob the convenience store, do they have to obey you?

Yeah. Yeah. No, no, there. I'm not. we're talking about authority here. And God is the authority, right? Final authority, right? So we use that term to differentiate between parental and what we know to be our Savior, our God. So yeah, no. We'll get to that. We're going to get to that. You touched on that a little bit earlier about the order of things. Yeah. And so we'll develop that as we go on. Again, you guys are all getting hit. Yeah. Oh, he asked me the question. I know. No, no. It's Mike. It's all Mike. If we could turn his mic off. Nick, could you mute him? No. So So, yeah, we'll get a little bit more, we'll revisit these thoughts as we get into verses 5 and 7 again. It'll come back up. So, let's get to question 2.

So, who are these higher powers or the governing authorities in verse 1? every person is being subjected to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God. Who is that authority? Ultimately, you're the local. You tell me, I'm asking the question, who does that apply to, to the governing authorities? Well, it is local. I mean, governing is not, obviously God is the final, but we have governing authorities, so we're responsible to local, federal, yeah, we abide by the laws, or if you want a petition in the right way, then, I mean, you have rights. Miles, I'd be interested in your thought on this one. Sorry, you'd be interested to hear my thought, you said? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Local.

Who are the authorities? Who are the authorities? Yeah, well, I don't know. I was just thinking like every level of government that we're under. I mean, we have, you know, county, provincial, federal. That's kind of what my mind is thinking. I mean, there'd be other potentially even. like local, but. Yeah, you know, getting back, that's what I'm trying to get at. So who doesn't this fall? I mean, is this federal, state, local, the building inspector, the dog catcher? Can I give you a personal example?

Hey, your mic's better now. I drove through one of those radar camera intersections in Greenwood Village. So I'm checking around to see if they send you a letter to pay 75 bucks for doing that. So I read the letter they sent me and they said, well, this is not going to go against your license.

This is da, da, da, da, da. And I start asking people and they said, no, you don't have to pay it. You don't have, you know, it's a local, I don't know if it's an ordinance or whatever it is. You don't, but if you don't pay it, there's no consequence.

Wow. With those I've heard that the difference is that people have gotten out of it because there's some law that says they have to physically hand you a ticket or something. Right. So when they mail it to you, there's some people have gotten out of it because of the law that says they can't just Send it to you. They have to be it's almost like getting a subpoena. They have to have Somebody hand it to you, right? So that there is something so that almost back to what I was reading about When you get out on technicalities but Getting back to it.

It's like which authority is not covered by this. I I'd say none, but I don't know That's a really good question, actually. Do you see any asterisks on this, or caveats? I see an asterisk, but... Which Bible are you reading, the New Californian? No, New Alaskan. No, I've not written the New Alaskan. I don't know, I mean...

That's a tough one, Courtney. And the reason I say that is because, um, there are certain times where the authorities are. Yeah. I mean, goodness. That's why I said this is a good, this is a good lesson for today. Yeah. I'm, I'm, I'm struggling right now. Um, like where, Where is the good and the authority? And if there's no good, there's nothing that resembles the Lord and His Word, I mean, do you just subject yourself consistently? I don't know. You're struggling with that asterisk. I'm struggling. I am. Hey, JD. You're trying to put the asterisk in there. There isn't an asterisk. I know.

Here's a here's an interesting just like to illustrate my my wife's grandfather was Fighting age in Germany when World War two broke out. So I mean he was drafted into Into the German army and he didn't want to you know, it's that kind of thing It's like what do you do? Right? Yeah What what? Yeah, that's why I mean, this is a very difficult passage but will and that's why I said it's very germane to today with what's going on and and all that but I didn't see an asterisk in here.

Let me ask you a question about gay marriage. You know, our church tells us and the Bible tells us that gay marriage is a sin. Gay activity is a sin. So if someone comes to our church and walks in and says, you know, they're here a couple of weeks or months, and they want to get married to their same-sex partner. And we say no. And they say, well, you know, it's the law of the land. So we incorporate something in our bylaws and our membership that we hope circumvents it. So they go to the Civil Rights Commission, and here we go.

So that brings up and why I wanted to do this so that you know I didn't find an asterisk in here that it's very very hard to swallow at this day and time especially to see this and and you know if the Politics I'm sure Nick has has no tongue left. He's bitten his tongue off on this one But it's I do want to get in there. I mean we're just going Now you know If I had it I'd try and mute him too because I don't think it once it gets started it wouldn't stop so But this I didn't see an asterisk so these are all the governing authorities anything and so but we'll develop all the questions that you have as we go on but That and Mike this is an answer to you.

Do you remember our grace class? Yeah. Yeah when we went through the grace class he is sovereign he does this but God carves out individual authorities and He relents some of his power and his authority to different human institutions. And we see this principle of husbands and wives, parents and children, all of those things we've been talking about. Also, the elders in the church. All those are different authorities that God has carved out an authority for. But under each one of those is a sphere of what that authority is able to control. For the church, we are under the authority of the elders. If we don't like it, we have to, I mean, we can't revolt or do whatever, we can talk to them and everything, but ultimately you're under the authority of the elders.

And so if you don't like that, you move on and get out from under that authority. If we don't go or we're not under the authority of an elder at Holly Hills, he can't, an elder at Holly Hills, if I'm going to XYZ church, That elder from Holly Hills can't exert authority over me if I'm under a different authority. So, Mike, back to the gay marriage. Under our authority and what God carved out, you as an elder have the ability to say we do not have to do gay marriage at Holly Hills. That's your authority and we're saying no. And now, now how that fits under the next governing authority, which is the local or the state government, you know, we get into those fights and the things that have gone on about, you know, can as a religious organization, can we ban gay marriage?

Yes. You know, in many cases. So under our authority, we can under the authority of the state, we can say no. And we fight that in the court, but I think it's, at least from my camp stuff, we can get out of it because of a religious exemption under the authority of the state or the federal. So again, we went through this in the grace class, that we have these spheres of authority that are given out. So the state government, the local government, the dog catcher, all of those have very defined areas of authority. When you start going down through authorities like in Ephesians, the very first one in Ephesians 4 has to do with believers submitting themselves to one another. That's the first one.

So there's this submission listening under thing that all believers are to do with one another. And then from there, comes the marriage one and the master-slave one, but it starts with the whole idea that as members of the body of Christ that we are subject to one another all the time. Well, and this goes back to kind of what Miles and whatever is saying, what did we just go through in Romans 12? about not being offended, being at peace with all, you know, all the same thing. It was us first being, you know, not being offended, not, you know, choosing to be offended, being at peace with everybody, don't evoke vengeance, all those things.

And now, that's where it starts. And then we get to this chapter. And now we're under, the first is your own self, that you control yourself, that you have all that. That's all in Romans 12 that we just went through. Now, how does that apply when we get under subjection or listening under an authority? Yeah, JD? I'm sorry. You got this. It's a good one. Yeah. Oh, it's super tough. So, um, right now, um, I'm just going to bring up what we're dealing with right now. We're, we're told that we have to vaccinate our children. It is a, we are being forced.

Yeah. There's some, there's some, yeah. So it's just like, there's, there's medical authorities too. And when you're told to do certain things medically now, yeah, put stuff in your children's bodies that you don't necessarily want to, it's like, oh, okay, I need to, maybe I need to better understand this verse because I sure don't like that. Yeah. And our kids are vaccinated. It's fine, but it's COVID comes out and now they're telling us a bunch of new stuff that we have to do.

And man, I mean, authority doesn't just run in a religious exemptions are gone. Yeah. So I, I mean, I'm, I'm on a little box at this point. I apologize, but Now, these were, like I said, this may be the four-week lesson, because this is very hard. You know, I'm preparing for this at this time. Like I said, it was like, wow. And trying to find the asterisks and all that. And I will tell you, there is somewhat of an asterisk, and we'll get to it. But there really isn't under the authorities. It's all authorities. And we'll get to a little bit of that as we go on.

But if you just don't like it, That's not an excuse to be under it. There has to be very specific things. This is really hard. If you're in a blue state and listening to some of the stuff and you're under that, what do you do? We're going to get through all that. It's really a hard lesson.

You know, and do we just, you know, like all the government documents, we'll redact this one, we'll black all this out and say it doesn't exist. Well, one of the reasons that our country exists is because people fled religious persecution in Europe. And they figured, well, if I can get to the new land, they're not going to tell me what I can do and not do. But once they got there, they found that within their own communities, they were as restrictive as any of the governments. Yeah. And we'll get to that. That's one of the examples about It'll go to all what we talked about, elders and church, different things like that that'll come up.

But this is very difficult to swallow. There wasn't an exclusion for governing authorities. It didn't say certain ones, and it gets to all of them. What do you do when the local guy does it? the local police, you know, there's a whole bunch of different things and it's really hard to swallow this stuff. But there are, there's a little bit of it. Oh. Question comes to mind when you think about this. What about Christians in communist China or Russia? The place that would be completely opposed to what we believe. Yes, and that is somewhat of the asterisk that we'll get to.

I already blew that up. What was that, Miles? I said Communist Canada. Believe me, Nick had to turn his video off when you said that they confiscated 1,500 or told 1,500 weapons are now illegal in Canada. I think that's when he turned the camera off because I think he couldn't take that one.

All right. Well, think about these things and it's very tough, but there are some asterisks that go to this, but from all the authorities, there isn't an asterisk. And that's the first part is that there isn't an asterisk to the governing authorities. There isn't like, well, this guy, this guy now, but there are some things under that. So, all right.

I'm getting the bell from somebody. Is that Brian? All right. Let's close. We'll close and then we'll take up question three next week. We good? All right. Heavenly Father, we thank you, we thank you for just who you are, and again, these difficult passages, especially as we're going through the times that we are. Although, seeing what Newell wrote in the 40s or earlier, and very similar thoughts and concerns at the time, But we realize that your word is eternal, and we are under the authority of your word, and that is the number one authority that we have. We thank you for all your wisdom, and even though sometimes it's hard for us to understand and to apply many times, but we realize that your word is our governing authority, and we look to that for all our wisdom and strength. Father we just thank you again for this time to open up your word and we just thank you for this day you've given to us and every day and we just pray for the next meeting again that all that's said and done will honor and glorify you and we thank you for this time in Jesus name we pray. Amen.