Honoring Nero

Here is a verse from 1 Peter that most Christians would have a hard time obeying:

17 Show proper respect to everyone, love the family of believers, fear God, honor the emperor.

Honor the emperor? Which one was Emperor when Peter wrote this? Nero? Likely. If not Nero then another Roman leader who was corrupt. And here, Peter, under the influence of the Holy Spirit was telling the Christians who were alive then to honour the man who would crucify him.

But here is the thing. God put Nero there. God’s placement or allowance of evil men to be in power is still part of his plan. Nero who was a beast was still a pawn in a greater plan to make the church the most powerful and unstoppable force on the planet. The blood of the martyrs was the seed of the church. And God was saying, through Peter, that when you honor the emperor you honor Me.

This is difficult.

What does Honour mean? Daniel honoured Nebuchadnezzar. And Darius. Total Pagan kings who worshipped themselves. But they didn’t compromise their values as the simultaneously honoured the powers installed by the Power. It means they had faith in God’s sovereignty. Jesus didn’t disrespect Pilate when He stood before this small governor that He himself put there. Pilate was part of the plan. When I hear Christians mock the leaders that God has put in place rather than pray for them as Paul tells us to do in Romans 13:1

Every person is to be in subjection to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God. 2Therefore whoever resists authority has opposed the ordinance of God; and they who have opposed will receive condemnation upon themselves.…

Then Paul said the same thing to Timothy in 1 Timothy 2:2

First of all, then, I urge that entreaties and prayers, petitions and thanksgivings, be made on behalf of all men, 2for kings and all who are in authority, so that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity. 3This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior,…

Therefore, I see that I have not been obedient to God and prayed for the powers that He has put in place. They are people too and the way that some Christians have disrespected these leaders shows that we have forgotten that they are normal people in places of power. If they were our neighbour would we disrespect them the way we do? No. We most certainly would not. I hope we would not. We need to pray for these people so they would know salvation and draw their decisions from the wisdom of God and His Word.

Lord, I pray for the current leadership of our country. I ask that Stephen Harper would come to You in humility and ask for wisdom from Your hand, Lord. I ask that Christy Clark would not govern on popular opinion but that she too would know Your salvation and joy and that she would see people the way that You do, Jesus. I pray for Barack Obama and ask that he would kneel before You in prayer and seek Your face and lead his country in a direction towards You. And when I think of Nero type leaders in the world like Assad in Syria I pray for him that he would be humbled underneath your mighty hand and see that he has nothing in his life that is not under the might of Jesus Christ and that he would repent of the evils that he has done as leader of that country. I pray for the leaders of broken nations like Liberia who are so devastated by Ebola right now and ask for their wisdom in dealing with this brutal disease and its ramifications for their countries. Please, Lord, stop the wars and the disease that rack these countries with pain. There are so many countries and leaders, Lord. Please help our broken planet. I thank You for still being sovereign and in control of this vast array of chaos.

Amen