L. R. Tarsitano—Saint Andrew’s Church, Savannah

The Twenty-third Sunday after Trinity—November 14, 2004

Authority and Obedience

“Then spake Jesus to the multitude, and to his disciples, Saying, The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat: All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after their works: for they say, and do not” (Matthew 23:1-3).

The readings from the Holy Scriptures appointed by the Church this morning are organized around today’s Epistle and Gospel, which have been in use at this time of year since at least the end of the sixth century. Advent will begin in two weeks, and in that season we will not only look back at the First Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, born in Bethlehem; but we will also look forward to the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, in all his glory, to serve his Father as the Judge of the quick and the dead.

Since that Last Judgment is both inevitable and unavoidable, it is a duty of the ordinary teaching office of the Church to prepare us to be judged. Last week, for example, we were reminded that those who do not forgive others their trespasses against them will go unforgiven themselves on the Last Day, in the Last Judgment. This week, we are required to consider other matters that will be scrutinized in the Last Judgment: in particular, the proper nature of authority and the proper humility that must accompany both our obedience to authority and our exercise of authority.

Thus, in the Epistle, St. Paul tells us that as Christians “Our citizenship is in heaven” (Phil. 3:20). This “citizenship” means that we literally belong to God, who is our King, and to his Kingdom. It also means that our day-to-day living, our “conversation” or interaction with the various communities of people around us, Christian or not, must reflect God’s ownership of us and our ultimate obedience to him alone. There is no higher law, then, recognized or not, than the Law of God; and no earthly power or authority has any right to contravene or change the Law of God.

At the same time, we learn in the Gospel, that God, for the working out of his own purposes, has given real authority to be exercised by human beings on this earth, whether they are believers or not. Our Lord declares: “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's” (Matthew 22:21). Our Lord certainly knew that Caesar was a pagan, but he also knew that his Father has given civil governments a rightful place in the ordering of human affairs.

Thus, there is nothing in the Gospel that permits a Christian to take the lawless position that his private conscience supersedes the laws of man, allowing him to disobey any law that he personally dislikes. It is only when “Caesar,” representing here all human secular governance, goes beyond his God-given authority and challenges the Law of God, as revealed in the Scriptures and delivered by the Holy Ghost to be the common property of all those faithful consciences that have been formed by the Scriptures in obedience to God, that disobedience to the law of man is both permitted and required.

It must be equally clear, however, that the limits that God places on earthly ecclesiastical or spiritual authority are every bit as strict as the limits that he places on secular or civil authority. In today’s New Testament Lesson, our Lord warns his hearers: “The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat: All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after their works: for they say, and do not.” It does not matter what God’s spiritual ministers are called—whether they are known as “scribes and Pharisees” or as “priests and bishops”—their authority extends only as far as they “sit in Moses’ seat.”

The ministers of God’s Word must govern by God’s Word alone. Their personalities, their charm, their likeability or lack thereof, even their apparent success or lack of success mean nothing. All that matters is that they “sit in Moses’ seat”—that they teach and govern according to the revealed Word of God as Moses taught and governed. And Moses is a perfect example of what makes an authoritative minister of God’s Word and a spiritual governor of God’s people.

When God called Moses to serve him in freeing the Israelites from Egypt, Moses complained, “O my Lord, I am not eloquent, neither heretofore, nor since thou hast spoken unto thy servant: but I am slow of speech, and of a slow tongue” (Exodus 4:10). And it is hard to imagine a modern “search committee,” concerned about the “image” of its congregation, deciding to choose such a man to be its pastor. Nevertheless, God answered Moses in this way: “Who hath made man's mouth? or who maketh the dumb, or deaf, or the seeing, or the blind? have not I the LORD? Now therefore go, and I will be with thy mouth, and teach thee what thou shalt say” (Exodus 4:11-12).

Or consider St. Paul, whose name “Paulus” in Latin means “little” or “shorty.” Paul himself confessed that he was physically unimpressive when he wrote to the Corinthians about those who resisted his teaching of the Gospel: “For his letters, say they, are weighty and powerful; but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech contemptible” (2 Corinthians 10:10). What gave Paul authority, as had also been the cases with Moses, was God’s Word at work in him. Thus true spiritual authority consists in what God’s Word makes of his ministers, and not in what his ministers make of the Word of God.

Those minister, furthermore, being mere men and earthly, will never be flawless until God purges every human flaw from the redeemed in the Last Judgment. Any system of church governance that depends on the perfection of governors and ministers is a delusion or a sham. It is a delusion to think that the authority of divine governance can reside in the perfection of a fallen human being. It is a sham to declare that one will obey only a flawless governor, for no such governor exists, and such a declaration is only a sly way of saying “I will obey no one.”

Consider the words of our Lord again. While he condemned the personal lives of the scribes and Pharisees because they did not obey the Law of God that they taught and preached, he also insisted “whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do.” God’s Law was not nullified by the sinfulness of the men who taught it, even though our Lord knew that these were the very same men who would condemn him and nail him to a cross. As long as their teaching, their doctrine, was the true Word of God, delivered through Moses and the other inspired authors of Scripture, then their doctrine was true and intended by God to be obeyed.

What was true, then, of the teachers of the Law, is true as well of the ministers of the Gospel. Those who exercise such an office ought, without a doubt, submit themselves in obedience and humility to God, determined to do God’s will, rather than their own. But the Gospel Truth remains the Gospel Truth, whether the ministers delivering it are good men or not.

Those who have been placed under the governance of God’s ministers, then, are responsible to God for their own humble obedience—not to the private persons of the ministers, but to the God-given authority of their offices; not to the sins of the ministers, or to their personal whims, but to the Truth and Grace of God that God delivers through them as he chooses. God chooses ministers, civil and ecclesiastical, according to his own purposes; and it is those divine purposes that we obey in the fear of the Lord, and not the men themselves.

It is, of course, both a blessing and a pleasure to have good governors, whether in the civil state or in the Church, but whether those governors are good or bad, whether at times they must be resisted or not, there is always a good God behind them, judging them, judging us, and working out his good purposes for our salvation and eternal life. God alone rules. Men only administer.

This fundamental difference between the absolute divine power of rulership and the God-delegated, limited human authority to administer is the point of our Lord’s admonitions this morning to call no man “Father,” “Rabbi,” “Teacher,” or “Master” (Matt. 23:8-11). He is not referring to some silly taboo about the use of these words, since they are used by divine inspiration all through the Scriptures as part of the ordinary, decent, lawful respect shown to parents, teachers, and ministers of God, whether temporal or spiritual. It is perfectly all right to call our dads “father,” or to call the man living next door “Mr. Jones,” even though “mister” is a form of the word “master.” The world does not come to an end because I call my physician “doctor,” despite the fact that “doctor” is the Latin word for “teacher” or “rabbi.”

What our Lord meant was this. It is idiotic for us to crave titles of respect and honor, when we should be addressing our respect and honor to God. It is idolatry and blasphemy when we give to men the titles that belong to God alone. No man is “the Father,” but only the Father in heaven. No man is “the Teacher” or “the Master,” but Jesus Christ alone. The difference is as simple as can be. When we say that we are “Christians,” we say that God has chosen us in his grace to follow his Son Jesus Christ. But only Jesus of Nazareth is “the Christ”—the one and only, eternally unique, irreplaceable, “Chosen One” of the Father.

Our Lord, then, settles the matters of authority and obedience in the simplest possible terms: “But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant” (Matthew 23:11). Greatness lies, not in the claims that we make for ourselves, but in our concrete service to God and man. Valid human authority consists of serving God above us and in serving those below us that God has put into our care and charge. True obedience is our submission to the God who made us, our submission to those authorities that he establishes over us, as long as they remain within the God-given limits of their authority, and our submission to the needs of those entrusted to our care. On the Last Day, within the grace of our heavenly Father, the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost, these will be the terms of our judgment as far as authority and obedience are concerned.