Original Meaning
IN CONTRAST TO the series of loosely connected exhortations in 12:9–21, this paragraph focuses on a single point: the need for Christians to “submit” themselves to governmental authorities. Paul issues this demand at the beginning of the paragraph. Then, in verses 1b–4, he gives two reasons why believers must do so: because God has appointed the authorities (vv. 1b–2), and because the authorities, with God’s blessing, will punish people who do not obey them (vv. 3–4). Verse 5 summarizes: Paul repeats the demand to submit to authorities and then briefly mentions again the two reasons for submission (in reverse order). “Because of possible punishment” alludes to verses 3–4, while “because of conscience” sums up the argument of verses 1b–2. Paul concludes the paragraph on a practical note, urging the Roman Christians to continue to pay their taxes (vv. 6–7).
Paul’s sweeping and apparently unqualified demand that believers obey whatever governing authorities tell them to do has generated a lot of discussion and debate. We will explore the key issues in the sections that follow, but one preliminary matter needs to be settled first: Why does Paul include this teaching at this point in his letter to the Romans? To some scholars, the paragraph seems to be a “strange body” in the midst of Romans 12–13, interrupting Paul’s discussion of Christian love (12:9–21 and 13:8–10). They therefore argue that this paragraph must have been written and inserted by someone else after Paul wrote the letter.1
But we have no evidence that the letter of Romans was ever without this paragraph. In fact, it contributes to Paul’s delineation of the transformed living expected of believers in the new age of redemption in an important way. From the beginning of the church the radical demands of the gospel to avoid conformity to this world were taken too far by some overly enthusiastic believers. They thought that the coming of the new age meant that everything in the world was under judgment and to be avoided by truly “spiritual” Christians. They included in “the world” such institutions as marriage (see 1 Cor. 7; 1 Tim. 4:3), sex (1 Cor. 7 again), and the government (see, e.g., 1 Tim. 2:2; Titus 3:1; 1 Peter 2:13–14).
Thus, the apostles had to combat this kind of extremism, pointing out that such activities were, in fact, appointed by God for the good of human beings. Christians should not think their faith requires them to consider these institutions as evil. This helps us understand why Paul felt it necessary to balance his demand that believers not “conform [to] this world” (12:2) with a reminder that governmental authorities were not of the world in this sense, but were, in fact, servants of God, doing his will.
There are additional reasons why 13:1–7 comes where it does here in Romans. In 12:17–21, Paul urged believers not to take vengeance but to allow God to judge. One reason why we can do that is that God has ordained government as the institution to carry out his judgment in this world. Moreover, Paul may have been aware of affairs in Rome during this period that made an exhortation to obey the government especially apropos (see Bridging Contexts).
The basic point of the paragraph is summed up in its opening words: “Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities.” Two words in this command need special attention. First, “governing authorities,” as the translation suggests, refers to any person who represents the power of the state: from the local bureaucrat right up to the emperor, president, or prime minister. In the past, a few scholars argued that Paul intended the word “authorities” (Gk. exousiai) to refer both to human beings who exercised authority and to spiritual powers, who, according to ancient ideas, stood behind those human authorities.2 But this view is now rightly rejected.3
The second key word is “submit” (hypotasso). What is important to understand (see Contemporary Significance section) is that this word is broader in its scope than “obey.” It calls on believers to recognize that they “stand under” government in the scheme that God has instituted for ruling the world.
With the “for” in the middle of verse 1, Paul introduces his first reason why believers should recognize government’s authority over them. Playing on the root of the verb “submit” (tag-), he reminds us that God himself has “established” or appointed (tetagmenoi) every authority that exists. This point is not a new one. Throughout the Bible, God’s providential rule over everything is specifically applied to the rise and fall of political leaders. As Daniel tells King Nebuchadnezzar, “the Most High is sovereign over the kingdoms of men and gives them to anyone he wishes and sets over them the lowliest of men” (Dan. 4:17; see Bridging Contexts).
In verse 2, Paul draws the consequence from God’s involvement in the appointment of all political authorities. When we rebel against what they tell us to do, we are rebelling against God himself, and judgment will result. Paul uses a Semitic expression, “receive judgment,” to denote this judgment (see also Mark 12:40; Luke 20:47; James 3:1). But is the judgment Paul threatens us with judgment that secular authorities carry out under God’s power (see v. 3)4 or a judgment God himself will mete out at the end of history?5 A decision between the two is difficult, but perhaps the latter fits the sequence of argument better.
Whatever we decide about the end of verse 2, it is clear that in verses 3–4 Paul specifies that one of the purposes of secular government is to act as “God’s servant” in rewarding good and punishing evil. The word “servant” (diakonos) in the New Testament usually refers to someone who ministers consciously on God’s behalf (e.g., 15:8; 16:1). But diakonos is also used to denote a civic official (cf. Est. 1:10; 2:2; 6:13; Jer. 25:9; Wis. Sol. 6:4).6 This is probably what the word means here. Political official are servants of God. Unconsciously, they serve God’s purposes in the world. They have the right, under God, to punish wrongdoers. As Paul puts it, the authorities do not “bear the sword for nothing” (see Contemporary Significance for more on the meaning and importance of this phrase).
Since the state has a God-given responsibility to punish those who do evil, if believers want to be “free from fear of the one in authority,” they should do good. They will then be commended by the government. But how can Paul claim that governments punish evil and reward good when he (and we) know of so many counterexamples—of states, such as Nazi Germany, that punished good people and rewarded evil? Is Paul describing the state as it is supposed to function under God, not necessarily how it always does? This has implications for the significance of the text, as we will show below.
With verse 5 Paul summarizes the argument of the paragraph thus far. He reiterates the command to submit and then, in chiastic order, touches on the two reasons for submission:
God ordains governing authorities (vv. 1b–2), “because of possible punishment”
The authorities punish wrongdoers (vv. 3–4), “because of conscience”
The word “conscience” (syneidesis) usually refers to that faculty within human beings that informs us of the morality of our actions after they have taken place.7 But the word can be used more broadly, and this seems to be the case here.8 Syneidesis here refers to our consciousness of God and of his will for us. Because we understand that God has appointed secular rulers, we must submit to them.
“This” at the beginning of verse 6 probably points to this truth. Because we are aware of God’s ordaining of governing authorities, we pay taxes. The verb form Paul uses here can also be imperative—“you should pay taxes” (NJB)—but the indicative is more likely, since Paul is explaining (note the gar, for, in the Greek) why the Roman Christians act as they do. And just in case we have missed it, Paul reminds us of the key theological point one more time at the end of verse 6. We must respect governmental authorities because they are God’s “servants.” The point is even stronger here, because the word for “servant” now is leitourgos, which is used in the LXX for people who served in the temple and in the New Testament of “ministers” of the Lord (Rom. 15:16; cf. Phil. 2:25; Heb. 1:7; 8:2; 10:11). Paul could not more strongly have shown that civic leaders are, in fact, serving God’s own purposes.
Paul concludes (v. 7) on a practical note. He first issues a general command, “Give everyone what you owe him.” But the context makes clear that “everyone” means especially every civic authority. This becomes even clearer as he gets down to specifics: We are to pay “taxes” (i.e., direct payments to the government, like our income tax) and “revenue” (indirect governmental assessments, e.g., customs duties).
God asks for more than a grudging outward recognition of the government’s authority; we are also to accord to the rulers “respect” and “honor.” “Respect” translates the Greek word phobos (fear), and a few commentators think that Paul may be following Jesus’ lead (see Matt. 22:21) in combining honor to “Caesar” with “fear” or obedience to God.9 But the context has not prepared us for such a shift in focus. Romans 13:7 simply brings to a practical conclusion the teaching of the paragraph. Because they are ordained by God, believers are to respect and honor governing authorities, manifesting that submission in the paying of taxes.
Bridging Contexts
FEW PASSAGES OF SCRIPTURE have been studied and analyzed over the years more than Romans 13:1–7. This history of interpretation has largely been the history of attempts to avoid what the passage at first sight plainly seems to be saying. Paul appears to be demanding that every person always obey whatever any governmental authority tells that person to do, for God has appointed every authority that exists; to obey God, we must obey his appointed representatives. Yet believers in every generation have quailed before the prospect of obeying orders from what appear to be evil, even demonic, rulers—Hitler, of course, is the classic modern example.
Moreover, Scripture itself seems to present disobedience of secular rulers as, at least in some cases, a virtue. The classic instance is Peter and John, whom Luke apparently commends for responding to the Sanhedrin’s command not to preach about Jesus with these words: “Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God’s sight to obey you rather than God. For we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:19–20; cf. 5:29). Moreover, resistance to the beast’s demands for worship in Revelation is a mark of commitment to the Lord. We will explore in the next section just how we can bring Scripture into harmony on this matter of obedience to governmental authorities. But we need first to look at both some ancient and modern issues that will help us to bridge the contexts.
Old Testament and Jewish teaching. As we noted above, what Paul says about governing authorities here stands squarely in line with typical Old Testament and Jewish teaching. As ruler of all the universe, God controls all the affairs of human history—including especially the governments of the world. God’s people therefore never need to worry about whether secular states might thwart God’s will, for, as Isaiah reminds us in Isaiah 40:23–24:
[God] brings princes to naught
and reduces the rulers of this world to nothing.
No sooner are they planted,
no sooner are they sown,
no sooner do they take root in the ground,
than he blows on them and they wither,
and a whirlwind sweeps them away like chaff.
The Persian monarch Cyrus exemplifies this power of God over human rulers. While apparently coming to power through his own ability and the usual political and military machinations, he was, in reality, God’s “anointed,” raised up to further God’s plan in history (Isa. 45:1–7). We quoted above from Daniel, written when the crisis predicted by Isaiah had come to pass. God used Daniel to humble the proud and arrogant King Nebuchadnezzar, so that he would realize that “the Most High is sovereign over the kingdoms of men and gives them to anyone he wishes” (Dan. 4:17; see also 5:21).
Jewish intertestamental teaching was similar, as Wisdom 6:1–3 makes clear:
Listen therefore, O kings, and understand;
learn, O judges of the ends of the earth.
Give ear, you that rule over multitudes,
and boast of many nations.
For your dominion was given you from the Lord,
and your sovereignty from the Most High;
he will search out your works and inquire into your plans.
However, alongside the belief that God stands behind secular rulers, there is also the realization that secular rulers must sometimes be resisted in the name of God. The persecution inaugurated by the Seleucid ruler Antiochus IV in the early second century B.C. is the classic Jewish example. He sought to eradicate the Jewish faith by outlawing Torah, forbidding circumcision, and halting the temple sacrifices. True devotion to God, the Jews believed, was displayed by those pious freedom fighters, the Maccabees, who initiated a guerilla war against the Seleucids (see 1 and 2 Maccabees). So Paul’s Old Testament and Jewish heritage supplied him with both a robust belief that God himself appointed secular rulers for his purposes and a proud heritage of resistance to evil rulers.
Rome in Paul’s day. Another context we must take into consideration in assessing the significance of this text is the Roman empire in Paul’s day. Three elements are important here. (1) Paul himself had had a generally positive experience with Roman governmental officials. As a citizen of Rome, he had certain privileges, which aided him in Phillipi (Acts 16) and later in Jerusalem (21:39; 22:23–29; 25:10–11). The Roman governor of Achaia declined to forbid the preaching of the gospel when the Jews asked him to (18:12–17).
(2) Some interpreters think these good experiences led Paul to be naive about Rome and to encourage Christians blindly to obey the emperor and his minions. But this interpretation ignores a second set of data. Paul believed that the Lord of his life was unjustly killed by the Roman empire. Surely the fact of the crucified Jesus, basic to Paul’s own faith and his preaching alike, would have kept him from any naiveté about government. In addition, the history of God’s people, so important in forming Paul’s own belief system, was filled with examples of men and women who earned great heavenly reward precisely for disobeying evil rulers (e.g., Dan. 3; 6).
(3) A final element of the first-century Roman empire may also play a role in Romans 13:1–7: a growing discontent with the power of the government. The Roman historian Tacitus tells us that there was considerable resistance in the middle 50s to paying indirect taxes, culminating in a tax revolt in A.D. 58.10
These forces at work in the larger society may have led the Roman Christians to question their need to obey the government. Greatly exacerbating such tendencies was the indirect influence of the Jewish zealot movement. Some of the Christians in Rome were Jewish, and some may well have sympathized with the increasingly prominent and popular revolutionary program of the Zealots, who were seeking to rescue Israel from Roman oppression by violence.
In conclusion, what we know of the history of the period suggests that the Christians in Rome may have become imbalanced in their view of government, led by the unrest of their broader culture, the influence of the Zealots, and their own “world-renouncing” theology to regard governmental authority as something to be ignored at will. Romans 13:1–7 may well be an attempt to right this imbalance. In other words, Paul is not giving a careful, balanced teaching about the state; rather, he is deliberately focusing on only one side of the issue.
Our own context. It can be tempting to think of “context” as something that affects only the biblical authors. We must indeed recognize their cultural situation and allow for it as we interpret what they wrote. But if the biblical authors wrote in a certain context, we also read in a specific context, and that context affects the way we read. With no issue is our own context more determinative than in this matter of submission to government.
(1) Most of us read the text within the tradition of the liberal democracies of the twentieth century. We are accustomed to governments elected by the people, following certain broad, humanitarian guidelines in their laws and procedures, susceptible to pressure brought on them by ordinary citizens. All this is completely foreign to Paul’s context. Transferring what he and other biblical authors say about government from their political situation to ours is not easy. Christians who still live under autocratic and even repressive regimes can probably appreciate what Paul is teaching better than those of us who have never had to live in this kind of atmosphere.
(2) We read Romans 13 with the horrifying example of the Holocaust vivid in our memory. Here is a modern incarnation of a demonic governmental system at its worst. Almost every interpretation of Romans 13 written since 1945 explicitly brings the situation of Hitler’s Germany into the discussion. It is pointless to claim that such experiences do not affect our interpretation. Would Karl Barth have argued as strongly that spiritual powers (potentially evil ones) are behind human rulers if he had not fled Nazi Germany before World War II? Would Ernst Käsemann have been as skeptical about the Pauline authorship of this passage if he had not almost been arrested and sent to a concentration camp for preaching the gospel during the war?
Few of us have so direct an experience of governmental evil. But some of us have; and all of us have imbedded deep within us the sense that human rulers can turn against God and his people and take on the attitudes and policies of the devil himself. We cannot divest ourselves of this knowledge; nor should we, because it counts as evidence about the world as it now functions under God. But we must also acknowledge the ways in which the broad culture and our own experiences perhaps prevent us from reading and applying Romans 13 as we should.
Contemporary Significance
WHERE IS THE EXCEPTION? As we noted above, the key question most of us ask when we come to Romans 13 is not “What does it mean?” but “Where is the exception?” Since it is taught so consistently in Scripture, we do not have too much difficulty coming to grips with the idea that God has ordained all governing authorities and that we must recognize that we stand under them. But we do have difficulty with the apparent demand of Romans 13 that we always do whatever any governmental authority tells us to do. We know there are exceptions in Scripture itself, and we believe deeply that it was contrary to God’s will for Germans to obey their rulers and help the Nazis kill millions of Jews, Poles, Russians, and so on. But how can we justify any exceptions in Romans 13? On what basis can we allow exceptions without doing violence to these verses? Seven possibilities deserve to be mentioned—listed here in the order of least probable to most probable.
(1) Paul does not demand submission to the government because Romans 13:1–7 is a late, non-Pauline, addition to the letter. We dismissed this possibility above.
(2) Paul is naive about human government. His own experience lead him to be far more optimistic about rulers than is justified. What he writes in 13:1–7 is his own prejudiced opinion, and we can ignore it. But not only does such a view deny a fundamental facet of the faith—the authority of Scripture—it also ignores the reality of Paul’s own circumstances.
(3) Paul demands that Christians obey government only for a very short time, until Christ returns to establish his eternal kingdom. But, while Paul believes that Christ can come back at any time, he also teaches believers to be prepared for life in this world on a continuing basis.
(4) Paul insists that Christians obey governing authorities only as long these authorities, and the spiritual rulers standing behind them, remain in submission to Christ. As we noted on verse 1, however, a dual reference to both secular and spiritual rulers in this passage is unlikely.
(5) Paul is demanding obedience to the governing authorities as they exist in his time and place—not for rulers in other situations. As we have noted, there may have been good reason for Paul to write as he does to the Roman Christians because of their own special circumstances. He is writing, then, only to that situation, and we are wrong to extrapolate from that situation to others. This point must be taken seriously. Indeed, we think that Paul focuses only on the positive side of government here because of the need he faces to redress an imbalance in the Roman Christians’ own perspective (see Bridging Contexts section). But while the circumstantial nature of Paul’s writing limits what Paul says, it does not limit the scope of what he says. In verse 1 he extends his principle beyond the situation in first-century Rome to the situation of the world in general: “There is no authority except that which God has established” (italics added).
(6) In our interpretation of verses 3–4, we suggested Paul admits only of the possibility that states will reward good and punish evil because he is implicitly thinking of the ideal state—the state when it operates as God intends it to. Paul may, therefore, be calling on Christians to submit to governing authorities only as long as they are fulfilling their mission, under God, to restrain evil and encourage good. When a state ceases to do so, Christians are free to disobey its mandates.11
The problem with this view is that Paul does not explicitly qualify his command with any such restriction. Yet this idea has merit, for it is difficult otherwise to explain why Paul ignores the possibility that the state may punish good and reward evil. He is describing how the state is supposed to function under God and is calling believers to submit to states that function in that way. Perhaps there is room in what he says to allow believers to turn against the state when it turns against God—as it does, for example, in Revelation.
(7) In demanding “submission” to the state, Paul is not necessarily demanding obedience to every mandate of the state. Key to this restriction is the recognition that the word “submit” (hypotasso) in Paul is not a simple equivalent to “obey” (hypakouo). To be sure, they overlap, and in some contexts, perhaps, they cannot be distinguished (cf. 1 Peter 3:1, 6). Moreover, submission is usually expressed through obedience.
Nevertheless, submission is broader and more basic than obedience. To submit is to recognize one’s subordinate place in a hierarchy established by God. It is to acknowledge that certain institutions or people have been placed over us and have the right to our respect and deference. In addition to rulers (see also Titus 3:1), Paul also calls on believers to submit to their spiritual leaders (1 Cor. 16:16) and even to one another (Eph. 5:21; i.e., in the ways Paul outlines in 5:22–6:9). Christian slaves are to submit to their masters (Titus 2:9), Christian prophets to other prophets (1 Cor. 14:32), and Christian wives to their husbands (1 Cor. 14:35 [?]; Eph. 5:24; Col. 3:18; Titus 2:5). In each case, one person is to recognize the rightful leadership role that another human being has in his or her life.
But implicit always in the idea of submission is the need to recognize that God is at the pinnacle of any hierarchy. While not always explicit, Paul assumes that one’s ultimate submission must be to God and that no human being can ever stand as the ultimate authority for a believer.
The parallel between a Christian’s submitting to government and a wife’s submitting to her husband is particularly helpful. The wife is to recognize that God has ordained her husband to be her “head,” that is, her leader and guide. Thus, she must follow his leadership. But Paul would never think that a wife must always do whatever her husband demanded. I once counseled a Christian woman who took her need to submit to her husband so seriously that she felt obliged to obey him by engaging in sex with him and another woman at the same time. I urged her to recognize that her ultimate allegiance was to God, the authority standing over her husband. She needed to follow the higher authority in this case and disobey her husband. But this did not mean that she was simply to dismiss her husband or to renounce his general authority over her.
In a similar way, it seems to me, we can also, as believers, continue to submit to governing authorities even as, in certain specific instances, we find that we cannot obey them. When they order us to do something incompatible with our allegiance to God, our higher authority, we must, as Peter and John put it, “obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29).
Christians will, of course, disagree about what those specific occasions might be. At the time of Vietnam War, for instance, some Christians were convinced because of pacifist convictions along with doubts about the justness of the war itself that they would be denying their God by obeying the government’s insistence that they serve in the military. Other Christians were equally convinced that serving in the military did not conflict with God’s will. These kinds of conflicts are undoubtedly going to increase in our pluralistic, permissive society.
But it is our brothers and sisters living elsewhere who face these conflicts with particular intensity. For instance, believers living in countries ruled by Islamic governments face many difficult conflicts between God’s will and the decree of their rulers. How should they decide to act on these issues? Those of us not faced by these choices and their consequences are not in a position to pontificate from a distance.
The burden of this text. Our final word on this issue, however, must respect the intention of this passage. Clearly, it does not intend to encourage disobedience to the government or even to lay the theological basis for such disobedience. It warns us against the danger of ignoring the rightful place government has in God’s ordering of the world according to his purposes. Government—and each individual state and ruler—is appointed by God. Christians seeking to do God’s will, therefore, recognize the right of the governing authorities to command them to do things, and they should, as much as possible, do what the government says.
This message is particularly appropriate in our current cultural climate, in which many are increasingly disrespectful of any authority. The various right-wing organizations rebelling against the United States government (sometimes in the name of Christ) are an obvious manifestation of this antiauthority tendency. But we see it just as clearly in the growing number of people who simply ignore the government’s rules about speed limits on highways or paying taxes.
One of my sons works as a caddy over the summer. He is not only the only caddy he knows who actually reports his income, but he is the only one he knows (Christian or not) who even shows concern about what the tax law might be. The culture we live in tells us to make decisions based on what is convenient or profitable for ourselves (and avoid, of course, getting caught). But the Scriptures call us to place our lives under the lordship of God in Christ. God has ordained government as his instrument to order and run society.
Capital punishment. Recent movies (e.g., Dead Man Walking) and books (e.g., John Grisham’s The Chamber) have brought forcefully before us some of the tangled issues involved in the death penalty. The growing use of DNA testing has added fuel to the fire of controversy by proving the innocence of a number of death-row inmates. The United States remains one of a few Western democracies that allows the death penalty. Arguably, one reason is the fading remnant of a general Christian ethic. But to what degree is the death penalty warranted from Scripture?
Christians who favor the death penalty usually cite the provisions of the Old Testament law, which required death for a number of offenses. However, as most sophisticated interpreters recognize, these legal texts are not conclusive. After all, it is not clear that the legal provisions of the Mosaic code, designed for Old Testament Israel, are still valid for the church—not to mention the modern state.
More pertinent, perhaps, is the principle enunciated by the Lord to Noah: “And for your lifeblood I will surely demand an accounting. I will demand an accounting from every animal. And from each man, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of his fellow man. Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made man” (Gen. 9:5–6). Here is a general principle, antedating the law of Moses and grounded in the theology of creation. Most Christian ethicists who favor the death penalty cite this text as critical for their position.
But other Christians think that the Old Testament principle of “blood for blood” is implicitly renounced in the New Testament. The “eye for an eye” method of retaliation is explicitly criticized (Matt. 5:33–48). Moreover, the overwhelming biblical emphasis on the sanctity of human life rules out the taking of a criminal’s life as much as it rules out taking the life of an unborn baby.
For these reasons, Romans 13:4 becomes especially significant. For here we have a New Testament text that apparently says something about the state’s right to execute people. The state, Paul claims, has the God-given task of punishing the wrongdoer, and, in describing that task, he asserts that the ruler “does not bear the sword for nothing.” Is this not clear New Testament warrant for the death penalty?
A lot depends on what Paul means by “bearing the sword.” Some interpreters claim that it refers to the Roman ius gladii, the authority (possessed by all magistrates) of inflicting the sentence of death.12 But this practice seems to have been confined to the power of Roman provincial governors to condemn to death Roman citizens serving in the military.13 Others think Paul is alluding to the authority of the police14 or to the military.15 We cannot be sure of the background. This makes it difficult to be sure how far to take Paul’s statement. Certainly he accords to the state the right to punish evildoers, and that punishment in Paul’s day certainly included death. But it is not finally clear that Paul is endorsing the death penalty. The debate will no doubt continue; what will be important is that believers seek to establish what they believe on the basis of all of Scripture, not just isolated texts.