What is your Christian duty?

I sometimes hear Christians say to other Christians “it’s your civic duty to help ensure good governance. That’s why Christians should always vote and even be prepared to serve in politics, military, police, or the judicial system.” But Jesus limits his followers' civic duty to paying your taxes (Mar 12:17); obeying the government (Rom 13:1-6) and to pray for their leaders (1Tim 2:1-2).

That’s why my suggestion to all Christians is to stop referring to the government as We or Us. For the Christian the government should always be They or Them. Often people ask, "But what if we had not stopped Hitler?” But it’s not the role of the Christian to fight the wars of this world, there will always be other people for that.

David himself attested to the fact that “the gods of the nations are demons” (Ps 95:5, LXX)!

Paul was very clear-eyed about this when he taught that Christians are not the State and vice versa.

Romans 12:19 “Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: It is mine to avenge; I will repay, says the Lord.”

Paul then gives this opposite statement regarding government officials in Romans 13:4b:

“He [i.e., government agent] is God’s servant, an avenger of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.”

Note that the government official can avenge but Paul had explicitly commanded the Christian never to avenge themselves!

“These words are important, because looking back in the passage, 12:19 explicitly denies the prerogative of vengeance and violence to God’s people using the same words…It will not do, as the tradition since Augustine has suggested, to posit the denial of revenge to be binding on Christians in the sphere of private morality while claiming that Christians acting as governmental agents are required to carry out God’s vengeance in the sphere of public morality. This is because such dualistic designations are the product of philosophical innovations attempting to confine religion’s applicability only to one’s private life.”[1]

The point is Christians cannot have two standards of morality in their lives. And just as in every election Christians invariably vote against other Christians, in every war Christians kill other Christians!

[1] Excerpt from: “The Ethics of Bloodshed in Ancient Christianity,” Consistently Pro-Life by Rob Arner, p 34.