Romans 13:1-7

Submission to Governing Authorities
1 Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. 2 Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. 3 For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and you will be commended. 4 For the one in authority is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are God's servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. 5 Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also as a matter of conscience.

6 This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God's servants, who give their full time to governing. 7 Give to everyone what you owe: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor.

Dig Deeper
The campus was abuzz with the news that a famous creationist speaker was coming to town and was issuing the offer to debate any professor in the area on any topic of evolution and creation. I was quite familiar with this particular speaker and I was leading a campus ministry at the time on that college campus so I decided that it would be a great deal of fun to attend. Shortly before it started, it was announced that no professors would take him up on the challenge (one professor even declared that he had no interest in going and getting publicly steam rolled in public by this man whom he called “a debating machine”), but I decided to go hear him lecture anyway. I have to say that I went despite having some real concerns about the guy at the time. When he spoke of creation and evolution, he was entertaining, if not always scientifically accurate. But there were other things that concerned me, especially when he began to speak of matters of government and the allegiance that Christians should show. Certainly Christians should not put their hope in a government or politician, but his anti-government rhetoric seemed right on the verge of being dangerous at times, although he never quite crossed clearly over the line. The night I went to see him, he didn’t talk about any of that stuff, but sure enough, less than a year later, I heard that he had been sentenced to fifteen years in a federal prison for tax evasion. He had declared that as a Christian he had renounced his citizenship to the United States and was directly under the rule and sovereignty of the Lord Almighty, so he did not feel that he had to pay taxes anymore and refused to do so. The United Stated government didn’t take very kindly to that sentiment and threw him into prison.

There is always a danger, I suppose, of Christians not taking the whole counsel of Scripture into account, and swinging violently to one extreme or the other. Doing so can lead to all kinds of wild positions which not only are unbiblical but also bring the people of God into disrepute. Paul has spent some considerable time in this letter demonstrating that those who have died to self and entered into Christ have been brought into the resurrection life of the age to come. We belong to a different family and live by the ethic of a different reality. He is now in the midst of describing, on a practical level, what that looks like and what it means in the real world. He has talked about the radical demand to swear off allegiance to the systems and patterns of the world and live a transformed life. Part of that, says Paul, means that Christians are to intentionally and firmly reject any notion of personal vengeance, hate, or retaliation.

That all sounds well and good, and it is, but Paul is wise enough to know that words can be taken out of context and, whether it be intentional or from ignorance, be used in rather dangerous ways to justify everything from human slavery and apartheid to the bombing of abortion clinics. Some might take Paul’s demand to come out of the world’s system and way of thinking and to live sacrificial and transformed resurrected lives as part of the new community formed in and around the life of Christ, and run with it way too far. There is a danger that they might begin to renounce any government system other than the new Christian community and refuse to live under any laws, citing their new heavenly citizenship. On the other extreme, Paul knows that some might take his prohibition against personal revenge and claim that evil must go unopposed by any human agent, pushing for societies to be left without any curbing or governing force which would cause them to spiral into chaos. Yes, the new creation has come and it is incumbent upon Christians to live by the principles of that age but there must be a balance and a recognition of what God is really up to in the world.

It was Jesus after all who came to announce the kingdom of God and called his followers to expand that kingdom wherever they went. Yet, Jesus also declared that the things of Caesar should be given to Caesar while the things of God should be given to God. His point was that money belongs to and is valued by Caesar and the systems of the world. God can use those things but he doesn’t need them. He didn’t desire money with Caesar’s image imprinted on it, rather God wants humans to give him their very lives which are imprinted with his own image. It is this balance that we are to strike which is informed by the reality that the only authorities that are established on the earth are those that God has established.

God desires humans to live in ordered and established societies and governments are the means to that. Christians do no good for the kingdom if they become obsessed with earthly and political matters and become a society that does nothing but rail against human ruling institutions. Christians are urged to be a subversive society that speaks against the ills of society wherever we find them, including in government, but we are to work within the confines of government whenever possible rather than demanding or working towards the abolition of any sort of governmental authority. To do so would be to collapse society into a heap that would be at the mercy of the strongest and most vicious. The transformed mind recognizes that God is sovereign and can achieve his purposes through even those who have opposed themselves to him. A government may rage against the principles of God but yet the Christian community grows through the suffering. Governments may be in control, but God heads the hierarchy in which Christians find themselves in submission.

Being kingdom people means to oppose evil and to live as resurrection people but it doesn’t mean that we become revolutionaries who, like Don Quixote, charge against every ruling windmill we can possibly find and work towards bringing down every form of authority that we can find. If the Christians in Rome devolved into that sort of society, then they would really be no different than the Roman empire who imposed their will with no respect to Gods’ ultimate authority. Theologian Douglas Moo rightly says, “Not being conformed to this world does not require Christians to renounce every institution now in place in society. For some of them—such as government and marriage—reflect God’s providential ordering of the world for our good and his glory.” In other words, opposing evil doesn’t mean that we are compelled to tear society down to it’s foundation. Rather, we are to stand firm on God’s principles and influence society from the inside out. Just like any other aspect of the Christian life, this doesn’t give us the answer to every situation in every country for every epoch of time. It gives us principles that discerning Christians have to wrestle with so that we might find the will of God in each situation.

It is possible that the issue in the Roman church that brought about this particular discussion was the many taxes that Rome and the emperor Nero enacted on the people. Taxes got so bad and became so unpopular at the time that there were even riots to oppose the taxes. It’s not a big leap to imagine that some of the Roman Christians gave themselves over to the kind of thinking that plagued the creation speaker. If a government was ungodly and unjust then wouldn’t it be the duty of a Christian to oppose that sort of thing and refuse to pay taxes or support that authority in any way? That mind set leads to the line of thinking that to even be a good citizen is to offer our complete support and endorsement of that particular government. Paul will have none of that, though. Being model citizens who submit to the authorities is simply a recognition that God is in control and wants societies to have order.

So what of the question of what do Christians do when governments become so corrupt, so evil that they begin to perpetrate evil themselves upon their own citizens? What do Christians do then? In those cases, the first step of the Christian community is to live by the values of the age to come and protect the helpless and stand up for those who cannot stand up for themselves. The second step is to realize that we are called to submit to the authorities, yes, but ultimately they stand in submission to God. We should be thankful to God for the government as a ruling institution ordained by God (again, that doesn’t mean that God approves of the actions of each Government) and we are called to regularly pray for our leaders (1 Tim. 2:1-2). We should, as a rule, be people who submit to the authority of our government and are prepared to follow their orders even when we may not personally appreciate them. But it is also our duty to refuse to give government any absolute sovereignty over us, and remember that all demands and actions of a government do need to be evaluated in light of the resurrection gospel of Jesus Christ. As King Darius in the book of Daniel once declared, “I issue a decree that in every part of my kingdom people must fear and reverence the God of Daniel. For he is the living God and he endures forever; his kingdom will not be destroyed, his dominion will never end” (Dan. 6:26).


Devotional Thought
What is your view of your government and your leaders? Do you pray for them regularly? Do you submit to their authority while at the same time holding them accountable when they do wrong? Do you have a godly attitude towards politicians whose political views might not match your own? Which is king in your life, your political views or spreading the gospel to all people?