Romans pt 4 – When Things Go Dark (Rom 13:11-14).
By Pastor Tommy Preson Phillips
Romans 13, A Metaphor for the Church in Rome
As we have already established, the second half of Paul’s to the Romans is about lived theology. It is about how we live and move through the world in a way that reflects the heart of king Jesus and his desires for our lives together.
It is not hard to imagine the Christians from the church in Corinth pacing back and forth in the atrium of Gaius’s house as they search for an apt metaphor for the life of the Christian in the Empire of Rome. “How can we explain the mindset that God has given us? How can we communicate the difference between the citizen of Roman and the citizen of the Gods Kingdom, the church?
We find the metaphor that they settled on in Romans 13:11-12:
“And do this, understanding the present time: The hour has already come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light.”
Night time behavior / Day time behavior.
In the city of Rome in the first century the nightlife was very different than the day life. In the day time the people carried themselves with dignity and honor as they worked to climb the ladders of status and power. But at night, things were very different.
The night time was when the larger gates of the city were opened up to allow for carts, wagons, and chariots to move throughout the city streets setting up their vending stands and selling their wares. It was loud, boisterous, and wild. And with all this money, wine, and food exchanging hands and being passed around, the nightlife regularly became a time for letting one-self loose; debauchery, fighting, and illicit sexual acts. The biggest offenders were typically the wealthy, always gathering a crowd around them and always more than willing to use their wealth and status to take advantage of those below them, both for entertainment and for fulfilling their bodily urges. The poor and marginalized, women, slaves, immigrants, and those of low status became targets of sexual abuse and were often used for nothing more than satisfying the mores of others.
City dwellings in those days are not the same thing as modern apartments. There were no windows, and the sounds and smells of the night life in Rome would have been happening right outside their windows. The night life would have been a constant reminder that Roman life was one of balancing the fulfillment of the flesh at night while maintaining the appearance of rightness and honor in the daytime, and the Romans played this game well.
And so Paul brings their mind to this dichotomy, the behavior of the average Roman during the day, and how it compares with that same Roman during the night. I imagine Paul saying something like this:
“Imagine the Roman man who has spent his entire life on the path of Roman honor, always climbing that ladder, but at the same time always filled with a fleshly desire for sex and wine and food and violence; all of the things that would hurt his status if acted upon. But at night, he can venture out and be the person that he really is deep down inside! Like a god in a playground of peasants, clothing himself in wealth and power, setting out to gratify every desire of the flesh!”
Integrity in the Life of the Christian
And so Paul writes in Romans 13:12-14
Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh.
The Christian, as opposed to the Roman, is a woman/man of integrity. Integrity comes from the word integer, which refers to a single number; the call for integrity is a call to be one thing, all the time. Online/offline, in daylight/darkness, with family/co-workers, one thing, all the time; the heart reflected by the flesh.
Paul believes that a day is coming when all of the lights will be turned on; everything that is hidden brought out and shown off, everything that is in the shadows will finally be exposed. The call is to remember that the daylight is coming, and to bring that future daylight into the present; to live in the darkness just as we do in the daylight.
The Christian is one thing all the time. She is the presence of Jesus in the world, and there is no time when she is called to be anything different. There is no hidden behavior, no night-time or day-time behavior.
When Things Go Dark.
I had a conversation at the beginning of 2020, when the COVID pandemic was just beginning to land here in America. The man was stockpiling food, water, and toilet paper, but also weaponry and ammo. As a fellow follower of Jesus, I wanted to understand how this scenario plays out if things really do go dark, and by that, I mean hunger, violence, and the general anarchy that arises in times of scarcity.
“The food is for eating, the weapons are for protecting the food,” the man replied with a tone that communicated that this was the obvious and most pragmatic answer for those who follow Jesus (a man who laid down his life so that we might live).
In my experience, most Christians seem to have an on/off switch when it comes to their faithfulness to Christ. In the daylight, we act one way. When things are “as they should be,” we are generous, caring, sacrificial, and generally good Christian humans. But in times of darkness, in times of rationing food and touch decisions we might be more tempted to flip that switch; we might turn to stockpiling instead of generosity; we might turn to killing over providing; we might put our trust in violence and the love of ourselves rather than peacemaking and the love our enemies.
In times of darkness, we find out what our faith really means to us. Does Jesus want us to live sacrificially? How sacrificially? Surely Christlikeness can be suspended when it is no longer practical or pragmatic.
Sure, being Christlike in the daytime might be easy, and it might even have social benefits, but this is merely practice for the darkness which we must always keep in mind. For the darkness always ends, and the light always shines again, and our daily prayer should be that in the darkness we shined a light that kept the goodness of God in plain view for all to see.
Only a faith that is strong enough to shine in the darkness is strong enough to fight against it, and to conquer it.
“Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh.” Ro 13:14
TommyPresonPhillips