Boards, agencies and officials of the government are told that obedience to instructions in the sermon on the mount does not fit in at all with Jehovah’s witnesses’ rendering everything to Caesar, thus making such ministers of God obliged to render unquestioning obedience to commanders who do not follow the law of God. But the above instructions from the sermon are only part of the compelling reason why Jehovah’s witnesses raise conscientious objections to subjecting themselves to military service and why they take advantage of the provisions allowing exemptions. In the United States of America the Selective Service Act of 1948, which controls the decisions of draft boards and public officials, provides for the deferment of conscientious objectors and also for the exemption of those under vows to God. Section 6 (j) provides for deferment of “any person” whose “training and belief . . . in a relation to a Supreme Being involving duties superior to those arising from any human relation” prevent such person from turning aside from those SUPERIOR DUTIES which he owes to the Supreme Being.
A person cannot become a Christian witness of Jehovah unless he takes a vow by which he fully devotes himself to God through Jesus Christ and so assumes superior duties. He acknowledges God as the Supreme Being and Fountain of life and the Provider of the way to eternal life. (Ps. 3:8; 36:9) He approaches God through Jesus Christ. He acknowledges Jesus as the Son of God who laid down his human life for him, thus providing a purchase price for him. No political state, no “Caesar” or emperor or dictator, can do these things for the dying sinner. And so he does not attribute his debt of life to any political system, but attributes his life to God and seeks to render it to him through Christ. He acknowledges that these Scriptures apply to him: “Ye are not your own. For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.” “Ye are bought with a price; be not ye the servants of men.” (1 Cor. 6:19, 20; 7:23) So their lives and their implicit obedience and superior duties they render to God as belonging to him; and they surrender their lives in God’s service and not in that of any men.
