Today's Daily Lesson comes from Acts chapter 23 verses 23 through 30:
23 Then he summoned two of the centurions and said, “Get ready to leave by nine o’clock tonight for Caesarea with two hundred soldiers, seventy horsemen, and two hundred spearmen. 24 Also provide mounts for Paul to ride, and take him safely to Felix the governor.” 25 He wrote a letter to this effect:
26 “Claudius Lysias to his Excellency the governor Felix, greetings. 27 This man was seized . . . and was about to be killed . . . but when I had learned that he was a Roman citizen, I came with the guard and rescued him. 28 Since I wanted to know the charge for which they accused him, I had him brought to their council. 29 I found that he was accused concerning questions of their law, but was charged with nothing deserving death or imprisonment. 30 When I was informed that there would be a plot against the man, I sent him to you at once, ordering his accusers also to state before you what they have against him.”
Dr. King once said, "It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me but it can keep him from lynching me and I think that is pretty important also."
The role of the civil authorities is to uphold the rule of law and protect the civil and human rights of all people. No, it cannot make someone love someone else; but that is not its purpose. It's purpose is to protect the someone else from the someone's abuse.
Paul was a citizen of Rome. He said he was a "a citizen of heaven," but when he got in trouble he let it be known he had Roman citizenship also. And it was his Roman citizenship that spared his life on one or more occasions. It was his Roman citizenship that he relied upon to protect and guard him when he otherwise would have been stoned.
Again, the law can't make anybody love us; and it doesn't have to love us either. But it does have to keep our churches from being burned, our services from being interrupted, and our protests from being stopped. And Dr. King was right, that's all "pretty important also."
NOTE: We are reading the whole Bible through this year. Tomorrow we will read Acts chapters 24 through 26.
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