Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter Debelak
I've always seen the human arrangements ordained by God as being more absolute and rigid than spritual realtionships. The very fact that Paul admonishes slaves to submit to their masters entails that submission to sovereieng human authorities is absolute, not conditioned on the "rightness" of the "master".
So, the first question would be whether God-ordained human authorities are to be followed rigidly.
The second question is whether spiritual authority should follow the same pattern as Ceasar, masters, parents and husbands.
Witness Lee used the analogy of parents, husbands etc... as a pattern. Is that right?
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A few points seem to indicate that "slaves, obey your masters" is conditional, at least in part, and not absolute, nor rigid. It is at least somewhat conditional on the behavior of the other, "authoritative" party.
First, Paul admonishes (in Rom. 12) the believers to, "
as much as you are able, be at peace with all men". As much as you are able means there are times when you can't be at peace with other folks, in spite of your best efforts. Seems to me this might be germane to obedience/ruling relationships as well. I.e,
as much as you are able, be obedient.
Second, the disciples of Jesus, when they ran afoul of the ruling authorities, in Acts chapter 4, for preaching the gospel of the resurrected Christ, said, "If we have to either obey God or obey men we will obey God." They were beaten and released and went right back to preaching and proclaiming, disobeying yet again the commands of the ruling authorities.
And yet Peter, one of the disobedient ones, admonishes in his epistle to be obedient to secular authorities ("obey the king"). So it seems to be conditional, both ways. Our job is to discern where "obeying men", the default mode, gets overridden by the "obey God" command. Sometimes the two conflict; often they do not.
Many who faithfully followed the LSM program for years bent over backward to be "one" with the ministry, and eventually it became too much. Obeying God meant saying "no" to the words of men.