Romans 13

Read the series.

When I was a kid, Peter Graves used to get his spy assignments for a secret team of agents on a reel to reel tape recorder. Every episode, we heard the words: “Your mission, should you decide to accept it is…” The fun part was the end of his listening to the message when it ended with: “This tape will self-destruct in five seconds.”

The tape would start smoking, then evaporate! During the whole series (1966-73), producer Bruce Geller kept us guessing at how the IMF (Impossible Mission Force) would trick one bad guy after another. Every enemy seemed clever. Every problem seemed insurmountable. Yet, episode after episode, the “Impossible Mission Force” pulled out some new magic.

Romans 13 is a simple passage. Its plain instruction is not written in a style that demands too much of any reader to grasp. Yet, though it is simple, the passage requires an understanding of the broader context. Otherwise, we will read God’s Word, seek to do what He told us, and find ourselves defeated and depleted.

I just finished reading Gulag: A History by Anne Applebaum. The cruelty that human beings can inflict on one another is staggering. KGB agents in the USSR enforced laws against anyone disagreeing with the Soviet government.