Ep 106 – Romans 13:1-7

It was Francis Schaefer who wrote the book entitled, How Should We Then Live? It was a call to believers to live distinctively different lives in the midst of the morally declining culture of the 20th Century. Paul issues a similar call to the believers living in Rome, the decadent and oppressive government that overshadowed all of life. And his words carry powerful weight for us today as we struggle to live out our faith in an ever-increasingly hostile atmosphere marked by secularism and moral relativism. Paul's words will sound just as shocking today as they did the day he wrote them. We will instinctively resist his counsel just as his original audience did. We'll want to insist that he doesn't understand. He doesn't know how bad things have gotten. But Paul is speaking for God. And God has placed us on this earth as agents of change and ministers of reconciliation.