His Perfect Love

Matt VanderVen: Today on His Perfect Love, defining a Christian's role in government.

Somebody has sarcastically said we have the best government that money can buy. There's some truth to that, isn't there? But it's not very reassuring to the average citizen. Still, assurance about government can be found and instruction, too. Today on His Perfect Love, we'll dig into that as we turn to Romans chapter 13. In light of all that's going on in our world right now, this passage sure has a lot to say to us. Here now to tell us all about it is Pastor Matt VanderVen.

We are living witnesses just by eating and living and breathing, just by going to work, just by being home, or whatever you do. Your testimony is your witness: who you are in Christ because you pay your taxes, you live orderly, you do the right things, and people see that. When contrary hearts go, "What is different about him? He's the first to work and the last to leave. He's honorable that way."

He doesn't steal from the company store. He doesn't go in and take supplies that he doesn't need, thinking, "They don't mind. I can have a few extra staplers at home or pens or pencils or whatever." Half of you just put your head down. No, but it's stealing. It's wrong. Let's call it what it is. Why are we not to do that? Because of right living, because we have a higher standard.

Why? He finishes. He says, "as free, not using liberty as a cloak for vice, but as bondservants to God. Honor all people. Love the brotherhood. Fear God and honor the king." Isn't that wonderful? He begins to tell us that just our lives will be used, and that will do more of a witnessing than Bible thumping somebody. You turning around and Bible thumping them is going to push them away, but you living the right way will witness to them.

What's that mean for taxes? Because he's going to bring that up. You can turn back to Romans. We spent about 35 minutes on one verse. "Therefore, whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God." Listen to that for a minute. "Therefore, whoever resists the authority resists the ordinances of God. And those who resist will bring judgment on themselves. For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to evil. Do you want to be unafraid of the authority? Do what is good, and you will have praise from the same."

He explains that in verse four, "For he is God's minister." What is the translation of the word minister in the word of God? What does it mean? You're a servant. And what do we call—and they don't even realize they say, "We don't want the Bible"—what do they call themselves? "We are public servants." They don't even realize they're actually quoting a portion of Scripture and they don't even know it. They're public servants. They're ministers. Now, they're civil ministers, not spiritual ministers. There's clearly a dichotomy between the two, but they're civil ministers.

They're ministers to you for good. But if you do evil, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is God's minister and avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil. This passage is important for a couple reasons. One, I thank God that we have law enforcement, police officers, and police women that go out and protect our country. I thank God for our military, men and women that put their lives on the line every day to serve our country.

That's honor. You want a hero? It's not the guy playing in a sport on the TV, no offense. It's the guy serving in uniform in this country. That's a hero. It's the guy that puts on a uniform or woman that puts on a uniform every day and goes out and protects this country by being a police officer or police woman, an EMT, or anything like that. These are people that are heroes every day that put their lives on the line to go out and help other people.

They're the first ones when budgets are cut. They get affected. We cut back their funding. In the military, I can remember early on—my brother served 23 years in the Air Force, and I was in the Navy for a short period—he actually had a point at which they were rationing toilet paper. Toilet paper. Just think about that for a minute. These are our men and women that were on the front lines and they're rationing toilet paper. I want you to think about these things because God warned us about these things.

He's telling us that we don't need to fear those in authority if we live right, living good lives. Not that they're going to do all the right things, but that God's in authority and He's ultimately in control. But there's something else also important in this verse. He says, "But what? God's minister as an avenger." Remember He mentioned whose vengeance is given out by? By God. Wrath is unto God. Vengeance is unto God, not man. We're not to do that.

But He says that He uses this minister, this civil minister, as an avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil. What's this passage talking about? It's talking about capital punishment. This is a reference to capital punishment. If you look in your Bibles and you've always wondered, "Is capital punishment a scriptural or a biblical understanding?" I'd encourage you to read chapter four and there's others.

Now, what that looks like, I can't answer that. It just says "execute wrath." If you want to see wrath, go to Revelation chapter six. The wrath of the Lamb. 1.8 billion people. That's wrath. You look for a biblical understanding of wrath if you want to study that. But that's capital punishment. That's what we see here: capital punishment for the crime for those guilty, not innocent, obviously. "Therefore, you must be subject, not only because of the wrath, but also because of the conscience's sake."

I love this verse, verse five. This verse has been so instrumental in my life. Many times we see speeding 55 miles an hour, right? And we set the cruise control to 60. All right, thank you for being transparent and honest this morning. We set it five miles higher. Some of us, if we're in a hurry—not that I've done this, yes I have—I've set it to 63, 64 because I need to get somewhere, right? And I don't do this all the time, but it does happen. And I put it right there. All right, there you go, public confession. How are you doing?

So I turned around and I'm going 64 miles an hour. I get pulled over. This happened. I get pulled over by a police officer. I love when they ask you, "Do you know what you're doing? Do you know what you did?" Most of the time—full transparency—I'd say, "Officer, what do you mean?" as though I wasn't doing anything wrong. Well, this one time—notice I said one time—this one time I turned and I looked to the officer and I said, "Absolutely."

And he looked at me and he's like, "Well, what do you think you were doing?" And I turned and I go, "No, what do you think I was doing? Let's just be clear here. What do you think that I think that I was doing?" And I said, "I was speeding." He said, "That's right." He said, "You were going 61 or something like that in a 55." I said, "Sir, actually I was going 64. I had the cruise control set to 64. I think something's wrong with your machine."

He looked at me like, "Are you out of your mind?" But he didn't say that. He just looked at me. He's like, "You're a strange fellow." I'm lucky he didn't go, "What do you do?" because it's conscience. It's your conscience. It was what's right. I didn't want to compromise. It was what was right. So I sat there and I said, "Yeah, I'm going 64 miles an hour. I'm in a hurry." And oh, by the way, I know you're going to give me a ticket, and I deserve a ticket. I'm not going to turn away. But will you also follow me because I can get there faster if you lead the way?

He then looks at me and he's like—now I've lost him. Up to that point, he was probably thinking integrity is rare. But he's just like, "Hold on a minute." He goes back to his car, and I'm thinking he's writing out the tickets. I'm thinking he's doing his thing. But I guess they look up on the computer and make sure you're not a criminal and all this and that. So he comes back and he's got my license and he hands it to me and he says, "Look, first of all, I am not driving you and being an escort for you to get you to where you need to go. It's 55 miles an hour. Set your cruise control to 55 miles an hour."

And I thought, "And? And what am I waiting for? The ticket!" Guess what? He says, "I'm not going to give you a ticket. I'm going to give you a warning because you were honest." He says, "I've been doing this I don't know how many years, and you are the only person that I've ever met that turned around and said exactly what they were doing. I mean, you were just absolutely crazy kind of clear. But nevertheless, you were honest." He says, "Have a good day." And he says, "By the way, set that cruise control to 55."

I said, "Okay, I will." And then I thought, "Are you going to follow me?" Is he going to escort me or is he going to follow me? But you know what it was at that moment? It was just like I read in the Scripture here where he says "because of wrath, but also..." I wasn't worried about wrath at that moment. I was willing to accept the ticket. It's what I deserved. But I needed to get somewhere. It was a consequence to my sin. But for conscience's sake, I couldn't lie. I couldn't bear a false witness.

See, there comes a point in our lives as Christians that we stop looking back and we stop playing Christian. We stop doing things the way we used to. And it's like the new birth. It really is the new birth where we start doing things right. And as a matter of fact, what does he say leads to that? "For because of this, you will pay taxes." What? So now I got to pray for the IRS? Come on. Like, really? Yes. For they are God's ministers.

I think he should put an "also" in there. It doesn't matter what I think, but an "also," attending continually to this very thing. Do you know what that means? That means that when I file my taxes, I'm not looking for an easy way out. I'm looking to pay my fair due. That means you hear people say, "Well, I work under the table." What table are you under that you're working? What does this mean? Speak to me of this table. Where is it? There is no table that you're working under that way. What you are doing is you are hiding money that you are to pay tax on, and you are losing out on the opportunity to be that public witness.

Now, I'm not saying don't file your taxes with an accountant and do the right thing. I'm not telling you don't do that. But do the right thing, whatever that looks like. Don't pay more than what you're supposed to. If you want to do that, well, then they give you a little checkbox there on the bottom that says, "I'd like to give you an extra whatever," and you can do that. But he's saying that they're God's ministers, and they also represent integrity and truth.

And without those monies, guess what? The authorities, the police officers, the military—where would the funding come to pay for these things? I know there's a guy that's walking around now and he's everybody's grandpa, and he's telling everybody, "I'm going to give you everything for free," and everybody loves him. I mean, on college campuses, this guy's like the man. They're like, "We'll give it to you free." But nobody tells the rest of the equation. How are you going to pay for it all?

I'm not trying to get into politics, but I'm a simple man. I know that you can only put out what comes in. Every month we have a little bit that comes in and we have to pay out, and we have to manage those two. In economics—I studied econometrics—leakages and injections they used to call them. Somebody that studied elasticity of demand—I'm bringing some of you back to micro and macroeconomics—and you're all like, "Brain headache." Remember that? Injections and leakages. Keynesian, supply side... okay, you're all glazed.

You're like, "I don't really want to hear your economic theories." But the point is we do everything with integrity. That means we pay taxes. That means we do that. You know why we do that? Because we're a witness. And when we do that right, it puts—as we read in Titus and as we—it puts them to silence. There's nothing they can say against us. As a matter of fact, they can come out and say, "Wow, you paid all these taxes and you donated this or you did this. Or you're being audited and, wow, everything's squeaky clean. This is the easiest audit we've ever seen."

Sure, what do you want to see? Here's my books. Here's everything. We have that policy at the church. We have an external audit done every year at this church for our budget outside of the church. In New York, an accounting person—that's all they do. They take, they review our books. That's what they do. They say "good," "bad," and they report it back. And we do that so we can be aboveboard without contestation, so that we can stand before you.

We also and Pastor Bill, he's the treasurer, there's a budget in there. If you ever want to know what the budget is, you want to see a miracle, go look at the budget. And look at what God does here with the little that—look at what God does as I just read that list to you from the last year. It's amazing. I encourage people. We've only had three people ever come in and look at it. And I'm like, "I want to tell you about this." "I get so boy, you're awful excited to explain the budget to us." Yes! Because it's all Jesus and it shouldn't make sense mathematically.

We shouldn't be able to operate. We shouldn't be able to do the missions. We shouldn't be able to help families. None of this from what—but God does it. And I'm excited because I love telling everybody about Jesus and it all points back to Jesus. It's the same thing in your lives individually. It's that same joy and reward that all of you get when you're able to show whoever, whatever: "Hey, look at my tax record, look at any of this stuff. It's squeaky clean. I'm a servant of God. I'm a minister of God." It's how it should be.

"Render therefore to all their due: taxes to whom taxes"—and the idea behind that is federal and state taxes—"customs to whom customs." What's that speaking about? Sales tax. What's a custom? Customs is where you try to get away from paying the sales tax. What do they call those stores? Duty-free stores. But the Bible tells us "customs to whom customs." If you're being charged sales tax, you pay the sales tax even on your tax return. What do they say? "Hey, if you bought things outside of this state that you ought to pay sales tax on, declare that."

Be aboveboard. Do everything heartily unto the Lord, Colossians 3:23. "Fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor. Owe no one anything except to love one another." See, he moves into verse eight and he's saying, "You know what? And we have to be careful because people have pretexted this to say, 'Well, this is why you can't have a mortgage.'" They read, "Owe no one anything." What is he talking about in context here? Love.

He's going to go through and talk about love. He's going to say, "If you're going to be in a debt for anybody or anyone, what should you be in debt for? Love." We're to be in debt in lovingly loving—love is what we should be indebted to one another for. That's his context. That's what he's pointing out. And anything contrary to that is a contradiction of Scripture. Well, I'll read it and then we'll take a moment because I know there's maybe somebody here that has that question.

"Owe no one anything except to love one another, for he who loves another has fulfilled the law." Proverbs 22:7 tells us that we're not to seek debt. I don't think there's a question about whether we should be responsible. We shouldn't take on debt if we don't have the ability to pay that debt. That would be sinful. That would be disingenuous to turn around and put something on a credit card and not know you have the ability to pay that. You are stealing. You are stealing. You are effectively taking from a credit card company knowing that you can't pay them. That is wrong.

Now, if you have the wherewithal but it's going to take you five years and you choose to pay interest, that's between you and God because that's your choice. But there are those that have tried to take a legalist position on this and say, "See, that's why churches or no one's allowed to have a mortgage." There are churches out there where if you attend, they'll say, "You have a mortgage? I'm sorry, you can't fellowship here. You don't honor the Scripture." And they'll bring them to this passage.

In which case, then I would encourage them to read Matthew chapter five, specifically verse 42, because Jesus—His word, His saying trumps everything and doesn't contradict Scripture in any way. Let's look at Matthew chapter five for a minute. Look at what Jesus said. Now, He's saying this in context of going the second mile, of doing right. If someone slap your right cheek, turn your other cheek. If anyone wants to sue you, take your tunic, let them have your cloak. Whoever wants you to go with them one mile, go two miles. That's the context.

But He wouldn't say this in verse 42 if He was against it or if it wasn't possible. "Give to him who asks you, and from him who wants to"—circle it—what's it say? "Borrow." "From you, do not turn away." We have bookends. The Scriptures give us bookends. One says, "Hey, when you're a debtor, you're slave to the lender. Don't run up debt. Don't be in a lot of debt. A lot of debt is not good." Right?

And then you have the other side of that where Jesus is saying if someone's in need and you want to borrow—as a matter of fact, the Old Testament Scripture says be careful with usury. Be careful what interest rate you charge a brother. You're not even really to charge your brother an interest rate like that. And if you are going to charge interest, it should be low. It shouldn't be something like you're ripping somebody off or taking advantage of their need or situation at that moment.

But I don't think scripturally there's anything wrong with having a mortgage. I don't think anybody is in sin in here because they have a mortgage on their house. I don't think there's anything wrong—we don't have a mortgage right now at the church. We have a lease. But someday if the Lord leads us to move or to buy, we'll buy it. And if we have the money, praise God, we would love to do it that way. But if we needed to take a mortgage and the Lord shows us and confirms it in the Word, we're going to do it.

We're not going to look back and go, "Well, what?" because Jesus said if you need to borrow, borrow. But we're going to make sure that if we borrow, we have every ability to pay. And we don't want to be a slave to the lender. We don't want to put ourselves in that situation. It's balance. It's moderation is what we're taught here. That's not the context, though, is it? The context here is not about your money and your dealings that way.

What's it really about? It's about your heart. He's trying to draw our focus because it's all going to build on the law of liberty in chapter 14. He's building to where he's going to go in 14 and say you have all of these liberties. You have the ability to do all of these things, but maybe you shouldn't do all of these things if you're going to stumble somebody else. See, he's building the context to that.

So it's why it's really important. And before we do that, he says you've got to put on Christ to do any of this, Galatians 3. You've got to put on Christ that way. So we'll close with this here. He says, "Owe no one anything except to love one another, for he who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments: 'You shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness' or lie, 'you shall not covet,' and if there is any other commandment, all are summed up in this saying, namely what? 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'" Exactly what Jesus said.

Now, I'm going to ask you a question. Are any of those commandments vertical? You might say, "Well, Pastor, no, they're horizontal." But isn't fulfillment of the horizontal fulfilling the vertical with God? Absolutely. That's what the Bible says. It says you can't please God if you're not fulfilling the horizontal. You can't please Him with the vertical either. If we're not loving one another, we're not demonstrating our love for God either. And if we love God but we don't love one another, we're not demonstrating our love one another that way. We're failing. We're missing it.

It's a two-part equation. You love God first with your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. He says, "Upon these things hang all the law and the prophets," in other words, the entire counsel of God. That's what that means when you see that Hebrew or that Greek idiom: it means the entire counsel of God. All 66 books hang on the entire Bible. All of Scripture hangs on that. That's what he's saying here. He's saying love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore, love is the fulfillment of the law.

You see that? That's what Paul's drawing us back to. That's what he was drawing Titus back to. That's what Peter was drawing them back to. He says we can get so busy doing all these things for God that we can neglect one another. And in so doing so, we're in debt. We're spiritually bankrupt that way. That's what he was trying to tell us. And it's just as much 2,000 years ago as it is for us today.

Now, next week, we're going to stop there just because of our time. Next week we're going to read on for the rest of chapter 13, putting on Christ because, after all, that's a key verse. This is how it's going to work. How do we walk it out? If I asked you how does someone live and you watched their lives and you saw the character of their lives, you would be able to discern or understand where they're at in their maturity of their walk with Christ, maybe. You can't judge them, but you can certainly get an idea.

Because we are what we do. Does that make sense to you? We are—our heart is after our treasure. What is our treasure? Is our treasure all about us, or is our treasure about others? Are we others-focused? Are we Spirit-driven? We just read the book of Acts a year ago or whatever it was. How can we get through the book of Acts and not realize we need to be others-focused and Spirit-driven in anything we do? That's our word of encouragement today. And Jesus is reminding us that we need to pray for our government. We need to submit to them. We want right living, and by doing that, we are a living testimony to who, again? Others. It's an others-centric passage because even by obeying the obedience of the law, what are we doing? We're demonstrating as a witness to others that they would know Jesus Christ. Why do you do this? Because my God has commanded me to. Amen.

Well, thanks for joining us today for His Perfect Love. You can hear this study from Pastor Matt VanderVen again when you visit HisPerfectLove.org. Catch up on what you may have missed in Romans at HisPerfectLove.org. Look for us on OnePlace.com and most of the major podcast platforms. The Calvary Chapel Harrisburg mobile app is another great way to listen to Pastor Matt's messages shortly after they're delivered. We can help you get started when you visit HisPerfectLove.org.

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Men, mark your calendars for the Men of Calvary Conference 2026 at Calvary Chapel Harrisburg West Shore. Join us on Saturday, September 19th, for a powerful day centered on the theme "Unity in Faith," based on Ephesians 4:12 through 13. Connect with other men through worship, biblical teaching, prayer, fellowship, and encouragement as we grow stronger together in Christ. The conference will be held at Calvary Chapel Harrisburg West Shore, 28 North Locust Point Road in Mechanicsburg. Registration is just $20 and includes breakfast and lunch. Register today at CCHarrisburg.org. That's CCHarrisburg.org. Men of Calvary Conference 2026: United in faith, strong in Christ. And then we'll come back to our study of Romans next time on His Perfect Love with Pastor Matt. See you then, and God bless.

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