Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 74:295 (Jul 1917)
Article: The Higher Allegiance
Author: Bernard C. Steiner

BSac 74:295 (July 1917) p. 414

The Higher Allegiance

Bernard C. Steiner, Ph.D.

No saying of Jesus Christ’s was more true than that a man cannot serve two masters; for, at some time, there must come the necessity for a decision as to which of two opposing courses of action shall be taken. By every one the choice must be made, and to every one the clarion call of duty comes, as it did to Israel, when Joshua summoned the tribes: ‘‘Choose ye this day whom ye shall serve.” Happy is the man who does not then hesitate; but, promptly and gladly, responds: “As for me and my house, we shall serve the Lord Jehovah.” Paul, in the Epistle to the Romans, carries out the same thought. Men cannot be independent. No man liveth to himself. Fie must serve some master; and, in sharp contrast, these early Christians were given the choice to serve sin or to serve the Lord. One must be a δουλός, a bondservant, a slave of some master; and, strangely enough, one had given him the choice of the master whom he preferred. Paul’s argument went on to say that those who were redeemed, that is, brought back from the power of sin by Christ’s death, as Hosea had redeemed his wife from bondage, were then given the high privilege of being adopted into the family of God and made joint heirs of the Lord Jesus Christ. That change, however, did not make them independent, but superadded to the obligation of obeying a master, the duty of so acting as to please a

BSac 74:295 (July 1917) p. 415

loving Father. In the East, with the strong family organization, or in Rome, where the patria potestas extended to the jus vita necisque and allowed the father to inflict capital punishment on the son, this duty meant a great deal. This is the highest allegiance of all, and a man ought, leaving all others, to cleave to it always. Seward and Lincoln had such an idea as this in mind in their “higher law “speeches; and, in another and earlier age, the noble army of martyrs exemplified this allegiance, when they refused to sacrifice to the Roman emperor and were thrown to the lions in the arena. In the early Jewish times, when there was a theocratic government, there was no other power than Jehovah to claim such allegiance from men; and, even when the monarchy was established, the choice was usually that which Elijah set before the people at Mount Carmel, and the decision was whether one would worship Jehovah or some such false God as Baal.

Religion and patriotism usually coalesced; and, when they were severed, it was because some ruler like Ahab was guilty of a sort of malfeasance in office which released the Hebrew from any obligation to follow the king in his evil courses, and made the way plain to seven thousand men who never bowed the knee to Baal. Patriotis...