"The authorities that exist"

Have we been reading Romans 13 out of context?

“Under a government which imprisons unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.” — Henry David Thoreau

¹For the most part, the structure of Paul’s letter to the church in Rome makes sense. After a few verses of introduction and his opening thesis, Paul launches into 11 chapters of riveting theological reasoning about the status of humankind (both Jew and Gentile) before God, the nature of righteousness, baptism into Christ, a personal experience with sin,² life in the Spirit, and then a long section about God’s plan from the start to graft the Gentiles into His family.

With that, the letter shifts into practical advice, first with a call for this mixed family, newly grafted together, to live in unity and love each other. The advice morphs into a description of how to love our enemies, those who persecute us, and then—seemingly out of nowhere—

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God’s wrath but also for the sake of conscience. For because of this you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing. Pay to all what is owed to them: taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed.

Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. (Rom 13:1-8)³

As abruptly as it started, Paul shifts back into a description of love and other practical advice before summarizing his letter and ending with personal greetings. To say the shift in tone is significant is an understatement; some scholars even come to the conclusion that the passage was an interpolation by later Christians attempting to justify their actions.⁴

While this obviously goes too far for those of us who believe in the inspiration of the entire text, some of the reasons for coming to such a conclusion are legitimate. As an exercise, try reading the letter (or at least chapters 12-13) out loud as written, and try reading it again without 13:1-7. Do these verses sound odd?

It sounds odd because it is, although there does seem to be a fairly obvious face-value meaning. Of course, that hasn't stopped Christians over the last 2,000 years from misusing it to justify their own acts of oppression. The incredible amount of damage to humankind done while relying on this sort of verse as backup is worthy of its own post, but we'll have to skip it today. Let’s dig into the biblical context for the passage, starting with the preceding verses:

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight. Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. (Rom 12:14-21)

The chapter break might do more harm than good if it gives us an excuse to read 13 without the context of 12.⁵ This passage lays the groundwork for Paul’s discussion of the wrath of God and authorities in the following verses. 13:1-7 is a practical description of how to “overcome evil with good” and “repay no one evil for evil.” The “governing authorities” are the evil to be overcome.

Paul chose and ordered his words carefully. In light of the preceding passage, chapter 13 takes on a sarcastic tone. His words may have placated the foolish powers of the world, skeptical of this new Christian cult that worships only one God, but they should be a call to action for Christians. Though we continue to submit, we are free from the laws of this world (1 Pet 2:16) for our freedom does not come from man; yet, we do not overthrow the powers of this world and thus repay evil for evil, for our weapons are not like those of the world (2 Cor 10:3-4). We should strive to reduce our reliance on authorities of this world, which pretend to protect their citizens all the while favoring the wicked (Psa 82), and increase our reliance on God.⁶

You might be on edge now, but bear with me. Let’s do some thinking on 13:1-7.

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment.

The language is explicit and I have no wish to deny the face-value reading; we are called to submit, voluntarily, to authorities—even those that are our enemies. This is in part because we must attempt to “live peaceably with all” and in part because our submission to their illegitimate authority will shame them and “heap burning coals” on them (Rom 12:17-21). Where the law of man and the law of God inevitably separate, “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29).

Furthermore, this voluntary subjection (hypotassō) does not imply inferiority, since we are called to submit to our fellow believers (Eph 5:21) and wives to their husbands (Col 3:18, Tit 2:5, cf. 1 Pet 3:1), nor does it imply the one to which we are subject is justified in their authority, since slaves are called to submit to their masters (Tit 2:9, cf. 1 Pet 2:18) and Christianity does not recognize masters and slaves or husbands and wives as distinct in Christ (Gal 3:28).

Yet, we would also do well to recognize the underlying meanings in the verse. There is no true authority except God; those He “instituted” were used to bring wrath on those disobedient to God (verse 4) and, in the case of “authorities” like Assyria, Babylon, and Rome,⁷ would reap the same wrath they sowed (e.g. Isa 10:1-19).

Paul's ambiguity in the text (“those that exist”) is intentional and should not be rendered away like some translations attempt to do. His point, perhaps not so subtle, is there are no legitimate authorities that exist other than God. After all, the axe has no authority—all authority belongs to the one who wields it, even if the axe does the hand's will.

This passage is often interpreted to suggest human authorities are instituted by God in order to maintain order and peace despite shortcomings, but history proves this to be false. Governments are not instituted for good,⁸ but as an agent of God's wrath. States (a category which includes far more than governments, and can even include churches) have been agents of oppression for millennia, and Christians should shun such things. When Christians have failed to separate the two (church and state) and start to believe the lie that just human rulers can lord it over people for good,⁹ they themselves have been those very agents of oppression, builders of the tower of Babel.¹⁰ The entire reign of the “Holy” Roman Empire is just such an example.¹¹ So either Paul was naive about governments, or some other interpretation is necessary.

Part of the misunderstanding surrounding this verse is an unwillingness to be consistent with the rest of Paul’s letters, where he often refers to “authorities” (lemma exousia) as supernatural powers.¹² The problem is not that this passage is understood to refer to human authorities, since human governments are at least partly in view and Paul uses exousia in such a way in at least one other place,¹³ but that there is a poor understanding of the way Paul understood human authorities to be intertwined with spiritual ones and of the way Paul understood authorities over nations to be instituted by God.¹⁴

Various biblical passages are sometimes pointed to as examples of foundational scriptures revealing God’s institution of government, but often they are an obvious reach (e.g. Gen 9¹⁵) or are illuminating but not foundational (e.g. Dan 10:10-21). The Second Temple Period¹⁶ understanding of national authorities stemmed in part from Deut 32:8-9, a passage that describes God’s response to the wickedness at Babel and the ensuing dispersion (Gen 11:1-9), and adds detail to Gen 11:7 (“let us go down”) by revealing that these dispersed peoples were sorted into nations with boundaries and given supernatural rulers other than God (the “sons of God”) to rule over them, since they had rejected Him.¹⁷ Paul and his Jewish peers were familiar with this idea, and this understanding of governments and wars between nations as being intertwined with activities in the supernatural realm was par for the course. Furthermore, these supernatural authorities were understood as being in rebellion against God, acting in opposition to God’s people (Dan 10:20-21) and against the righteous in general (Psa 82).

God may have instituted authorities, but this does not make them good. God instituted Assyria and allowed them to rape and pillage the northern kingdom of Israel, part of God's chosen people. God instituted Babylon and allowed them to rape and pillage Judah, part of God's chosen people and even humiliate the Davidic king whom God chose to bring about the Messiah. Not long after this letter was written, God would allow Rome to once more rape and pillage Jerusalem, putting His people to death and destroying the very temple built by God's chosen people to worship Him. We have plenty of reason to fear human rulers whether we are righteous or unrighteous, but this kind of fear has no place before the one true God (Rom 13:3). Kings may carry out God's wrath, but justice belongs to Him (Prov 16:11, Dan 4:32).

For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God’s servant for your good.

This is perhaps the most obvious clue that Paul has a different agenda in this passage than simply reminding his audience to pay their taxes. The sarcasm here is hard to avoid—Paul had already been arrested at least once for committing “good conduct” as he wrote this and would only make it to Rome as a prisoner, eventually dying at the hands of the state!¹⁸ The rulers in Paul’s day, primarily Rome, were absolutely “a terror to good conduct.” They had murdered Jesus and already many of His followers, and it would only get worse before it got better. Paul, like the other New Testament writers, had a problem: the Christian sect was becoming increasingly scrutinized by the state, not least for its odd penchant for rejection of the Emperor’s supposed divinity.

Paul wrote his last letters in captivity

Brilliantly, Paul disguised explicitly anti-statist messaging in language that at first glance seemed to approve wholeheartedly of Rome. Other New Testament authors did the same, perhaps most obviously Peter in passages like 1 Pet 2:17. Paul’s ultimate point is true: real authorities, of which only One exists, are no threat to the righteous. Furthermore, when a nation rejects God as the kingdoms of Israel and Judah did, He may allow them to be destroyed by an evil nation like Assyria and Babylon.¹⁹ Again, this happened just a few years after Romans was written, when Rome crushed Jerusalem and destroyed the temple in 70 AD.

When we resist the governing authorities and are persecuted for it, let us rejoice as those who are blessed (Matt 5:10-12).

For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.

At first glance, Paul is referring to the government as an agent of God's wrath. This is part of the intended meaning as we have already discussed, but not all.²⁰ Some interpreters poorly understand this verse to be a statement recognizing God-given authority to the government to perform capital punishment—an idea Rome itself maintained (ius gladii, the “right of the sword”). Paul's statement makes a mockery of such a claim. The government has as much authority to put to death the most vile sinner as they did when they put to death Christ Himself, for vengeance belongs only to God (Rom 12:19), and His sword is His Word (Heb 4:12, cf. Rev 1:16, 2:12), which condemns all people for their sin and offers all mercy, manifested in Jesus (John 1:1-2).

Therefore one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God’s wrath but also for the sake of conscience.

The ESV unfortunately adds a word here. Instead of “not only to avoid God's wrath,” the literal rendering is “not only because of wrath” (LEB, cf. KJV, NASB, NIV, NRSV, etc.). Paul maintains ambiguity in whether the wrath of human authorities or of God are in view, which seems to be part of his point. Sometimes God allows human authorities to ravage His people, as the Old Testament describes in great detail. However, God is always in control. Where we can submit to human authority without violating our conscience, we should do so in order to avoid bringing the wrath of man upon ourselves and our neighbors.

For because of this you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing. Pay to all what is owed to them: taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed.

Reading the passage in context gives verses 6-7 a different feel. Whatever you owe to illegitimate, false powers—give it to them (Matt 22:19-21).

Compare to 1 Pet 2:17, which, when rendered accurately, makes it clear no human authorities are due special honor or respect. All people are equal in the eyes of God. “The poor man and the oppressor meet together; the Lord gives light to the eyes of both” (Prov 29:13).

Do we owe taxes? Most certainly. For money bears the image of idols; it was created by illegitimate authorities and so it belongs to them. They will take it from their own people under threat of death, and have done so for thousands of years. Where we must pay, we must pay (cf. Luke 16:9), knowing they all the time use the money we yield to murder, steal, and destroy God's people around the world. In the meantime, we should attempt to reduce both our reliance on the government and their ability to take from us, and do what the already-defeated authorities of this world fail to do: “Give justice to the weak and the fatherless; maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute. Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked” (Psa 82).

When Romans was written, Jews and Christians may have been subject to additional taxes not levied on their pagan peers. These would have been unfair, needless taxes, and like all taxes were used to fund Rome's army and oppressive regimes. Did Paul want them to pay these taxes? Paul wanted them to survive long enough to preach the gospel and live at peace with all people if possible, so they must pay whatever taxes necessary to accomplish this.

Lastly, let us respect human leaders by praying for them,²¹ for “love is the fulfilling of the law.”

I understand that this strain of interpretation of passages like Romans 13 (and it's far from the only one) can make a lot of Christians feel uncomfortable and wary because we recognize—rightly—we are called to submit. It's a cost we count to live in this upside-down kingdom! Rejecting the notion that the authority assumed by the government and other powers-that-be is justified or legitimate sounds an awfully lot like a certain scary “A-word” and a perspective we've literally been trained since birth by the powers of this world to fear. But no matter how we approach these topics, if our response is couched in love we're on the right track. For the New Testament authors, living the good life is about loving God and our neighbor, right here, right now. It's not about the ends; it’s about the means. God's got the ends covered.

1. Opening quotation from Civil Disobedience, 1849.

2. I refer here to Rom 7:7-25, an admittedly puzzling moment in the letter which many interpret in a non-autobiographical manner. The discussion is well beyond the scope of this post.

3. Biblical quotations will be from the ESV unless otherwise noted.

4. This is a minority opinion even among secular scholars, partly because there is no textual evidence for an interpolation; all our ancient copies of Romans contain the passage. The debate has quietly continued since Romans xiii. 1-7: An Interpolation by James Kallas in New Testament Studies (1965). A more recent form of the argument is made in The Authentic Letters of Paul by Arthur J. Dewey et al (2010).

5. Even the scholar J. Daryl Charles, who advocates just war theology and understandings of Rom 13 far more generous toward governments than my own, nevertheless reminds us of the “common tendency in teaching and preaching from these verses…to sever the material found in Romans 13:1-7 from the material before and after. This detachment, of course, permits great liberty with the text—more liberty than is warranted” (Between Pacifism and Jihad: Just War and Christian Tradition, InterVarsity Press, 2005).

6. The result, eschatologically, might look something like Leo Tolstoy’s vision of biblically revolutionized society “instituted only by there being more and more people who do not require protection from governmental power, and by there being more and more people who will be ashamed of applying this power” (On Anarchy, accessible online here at the time of writing).

7. And China, and Russia, and even—yep—the United States.

8. To accept this doctrine, it has to be true even of the most despicable governments in our human history. I can think of a few that may very well have been instituted by God to achieve observable ends, but not for direct good. Can you?

9. One recent example would be Jeff Sessions’ appeal in 2018 to Romans 13 as support for then-current immigration policy. Admittedly, the then-Attorney-General’s interpretation of the passage is not uncommon but essentially boils down to “the law is just because it is the law and God ordains it,” an interpretation that rapidly falls apart when applied to any number of examples of unjust laws in any number of nations, past or present. At the time of writing, his quote can be found online here.

10. Gen 11:1-9. The builders of Babel wanted to reach heaven—the abode of God—via human means. My position is that this is the same sort of sin as when we try to build the kingdom of heaven on earth through human means, like legislation. It is God alone who reconciles all things, even heaven and earth (cf. Col 1:20). We must live as if we believe it.

11. Beyond more obvious examples like the Crusades and the sending of thousands to their deaths through lies and manipulation, I would cite the long-lasting attempt to treat contraception like homicide on a moral and/or legal level in their attempt to be the kingdom of God on earth through political means (e.g. Decretales Gregorii IX in the 1230s AD).

12. e.g. 1 Cor 15:24, Eph 2:2, 3:10, 6:12, Col 1:13, 2:15, cf. 1 Pet 3:22.

13. Tit 3:1, cf. Luke 12:11.

14. There are some evangelical scholars who deny any possibility that non-human exousia might be in view here, such as Thomas Schreiner in his book New Testament Theology: Magnifying God in Christ and his commentary on Romans for BECNT. However, many scholars are open to the idea even if they land elsewhere.

15. For a particularly egregious modern example, see John Courson’s Application Commentary: New Testament (2004), where, in a discussion of Rom 13:4, Gen 9 is appealed to as evidence that a lack of capital punishment is what has caused Christianity to fall behind Islam in conversion rates around the world and has caused America to unravel.

16. 516 BC - 70 AD, a period of theological development and various streams of Jewish thought that Paul and the other New Testament authors were born into.

17. Some examples of Old Testament passages that immediately make more sense in light of this understanding of Deut 32:8-9 would include Naaman's request in 2 Kgs 5:15-19, where he believes himself to be unable to worship Yahweh without some of the earth from the nation within Yahweh's borders, and David's cry in 1 Sam 26:17-19, where he feels he has been robbed of his ability to serve Yahweh after being driven beyond the borders of the nation of the Lord's inheritance.

18. It is traditionally assumed Paul was martyed by Nero around 65 AD, possibly indicated by 2 Tim 4:6. Although the Bible does not describe the event, most scholars think it likely Paul was martyed around this time.

19. Earlier in Romans, Paul reminded the Gentile believers in particular of this reality (Rom 11:13-24).

20. In particular, this subversive reading of 13:1-7 seems to suggest Paul had in mind the greatest of God’s servants: Jesus, who “does not bear the sword in vain” (Rom 13:4, cf. Matt 10:34, Rev 1:16). He is the only one truly in authority to whom we must give account, and His approval is the only approval worth striving for. Much more could be said about this potential double-entendre, but it is beyond the scope of this post.

21. 1 Tim 2:1-2, cf. Matt 5:44, Luke 6:28, Rom 12:14.