Submit to the Governing Authorities
Romans 13.1-7
I’ll be honest with you: when I sat down to begin preparing this text, I was already a little annoyed with the idea of it, because any time you preach on a series of commandments or principles, you’ll inevitably have people looking for a loophole. The more difficult the teaching is, the more people start looking for exceptions to the rule. For example, any time you preach on sexuality, people start asking, “Okay…but what about this? Can we do this?”
There are few topics in the Bible more likely to provoke this “What-about-this-ism” than the topic of submission to the government—especially when you’re preaching on this subject in France, a country in which rebellion against the government is practically part of our national identity.
But God inspired this passage for a reason, and all of his Word is helpful for the church, so no matter how unpleasant we might find it, what he says here is good for us. (FYI: We won’t be taking a break during the message today, because if all goes well this message will be a little shorter than usual. If you all start throwing tomatoes at me, we’ll be here longer.)
Context
Just a few words before we get into the text itself. As you’ll remember, Paul laid out this beautiful description of God’s grace to us in Christ in chapters 1-11, and then he began laying out what our proper response should be. He began chapter 12 by saying,
I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. 2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
So the idea here is, in the light of all of God’s graces to us, we should respond by presenting our bodies as sacrifices to him, and allowing him to transform us into Christ’s image. He’s given several examples so far of what that looks like: humility; self-sacrificing service in the church; genuine love and passionate obedience to God’s commandments outside the church; kindness to our enemies rather than retaliation.
Chapter 12 was all about how our understanding of God’s grace to us, and our love for God in response, should shape our character and drive us to love one another. He’ll come back to that subject in v. 8 of chapter 13. So these first seven verses of chapter 13 might seem a bit out of place, like an interruption of his main thought.
But we still have good reason to think this interruption—or rather this parenthesis—was intentional. Paul is speaking to Gentile and Jewish Christians in Rome, and if we remember our gospels, we know that there were few people the Jews hated more than the Romans, because the Romans were the ones occupying Israel. Christians weren’t yet openly persecuted by the Romans (Christianity was frowned upon, to be sure, but it wouldn’t be illegal in the Roman Empire until A.D. 67, a few years later, under Emperor Nero), but let’s just say the two groups weren’t fond of each other. So few things could have been more surprising than to hear Paul take his teaching on love, and apply it to the hilt—all the way to the governing authorities.
Submission for the Sake of God (v. 1-2)
We’ll go through v. 1-2 quickly, because they’re not that complicated, and here he lays out his main point, his guiding principle. Romans 13.1-2:
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. 2 Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment.
So many Christians in the West come at this text looking for the loophole, thinking, When DON’T I have to obey? Often the way we think is, if we voted for those in power, we love this passage. If we didn’t vote for them, we hate this passage (and often feel justified in ignoring it). But Paul won’t allow us to be subject to a governing authority only if we personally approve of them. It has nothing to do with our feelings, our political opinions, or our own personal comfort.
The ultimate reason why he calls us to submit to the governing authorities is because only Jesus Christ is King. Christ is our ultimate authority; he is the only being to whom we owe our total allegiance and worship and reverence. It is our allegiance to him that drives us to submit to the authorities he has put in place.
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.
You see, this isn’t really about the government at all, but about God. Paul is calling us to recognize God’s sovereignty over all of human life—even over human government. Christ is King, so we can submit to the governors to whom he has given authority. Thomas Schreiner said it this way: “From a human perspective, rulers come to power through force or heredity or popular choice. But the 'transformed mind’ recognizes behind every such process the hand of God.” Or, as Daniel tells the king in Daniel 4.17, “the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will.”
God calls us to be subject to our governing authorities because the authority they have ultimately comes from him. We might ask why he allowed so-and-so to come to power, but that he did allow them to come to power is inarguable. So to resist that authority is to resist God himself, Paul says in v. 2. Ultimately, we don’t submit to the government because the government deserves our submission; we submit to the government because God deserves our obedience.
Submission for the Sake of Security and Conscience (v. 3-5)
That’s the big idea here. But obviously, you can’t get through v. 1-2 without a whole host of objections coming to mind. But Paul goes a long way towards helping answer those objections in v. 3-5, and he also helps us better understand what kind of submission he’s talking about. V. 3:
3 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, 4 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. 5 Therefore one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God’s wrath but also for the sake of conscience.
Now of course the classic objection that comes to our minds is, for example, “What about those people who hid Jews from the Nazis during World War II? Should they have submitted?”
Of course the answer is no—but this is still the Word of God we’re talking about; we can’t allow ourselves to just throw away a portion of it because we can’t quite see how it circles the square. We have to do the work to think about it biblically.
I almost brought this up last week, but I was running a bit too long so I saved it for today.
Starting in Romans 12, verse 9, a stylistic change takes place that I’m sure you noticed. Paul begins applying sweeping instructions over a broad range of topics; our lives with God, our lives with the church, our lives outside the church, our lives with our enemies. From there all the way until around Romans 13.10, his writing becomes quite similar to what we see in wisdom literature, like the Proverbs or Ecclesiastes.
It’s not accidental: Paul knows the Bible better than any of us, and even quotes the Proverbs more than once in these passages. He knows what he’s doing. Wisdom literature always sets up principles that are meant to be applied situationally.
For example, in chapter 12, verse 20, he quotes Proverbs 25, saying, “If your enemy is hungry, feed him.” The situation is clear here: we’re not to conclude that the Bible calls us to force-feed our enemy whether or not he’s hungry. If your enemy is hungry, then feed him. Do him good, rather than harm, no matter what he’s done to you. The point is that Christian love calls us to show kindness to our enemies, which will force them to come face-to-face with the harm they are causing.
Paul picks up the format of wisdom literature quite often, and that’s what he’s doing here. He’s setting up principles that are meant to be applied situationally. Wisdom literature in the Old Testament always addresses best-case scenarios: in the normal state of things, this is how we should behave. It speaks less of what we should do in a given situation, and more of what kind of people we should be. It speaks less of our actions, and more of our character.
In other words, no matter how adept we might be at finding exceptions to what Paul is saying, those exceptions don’t apply here; that’s not what he’s talking about. We have several examples in the Bible of times when civil disobedience is praised—for example, in Exodus 1, when the Pharaoh orders that Hebrew baby boys be killed, two midwives hid the babies then lied about it, they were rewarded by God. Or there’s Daniel refusing to only pray to the king in Daniel 6. Or Peter and the apostles refusing to stop preaching the gospel in Acts 5.
Paul knows these examples well, and calls us to be subject to the governing authorities, not to obey them blindly in every conceivable situation. He’s laying out a principle that applies to the normal state of things. And we know this because in v. 3, he says that rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. That is the normal state of things; that’s how it’s supposed to work.
But we could put it another way: if our rulers become a terror to good conduct, that’s when we have a problem. A Christian living in a country where Christianity is illegal should continue to live for Christ and find ways to wisely share the gospel, even though it’s against the law.
And there may be some instances when this is the case for us today in France. If the government doesn’t allow us to obey God, or requires us to sin, then our response will be, “We must obey God rather than man.”
But let’s be honest: that’s not the situation most of us are in, is it? Those instances, if they come up, are rare in France. The French government might promote things that are sinful; it definitely allows things that are sinful. But in most situations, the government doesn’t prohibit us from obeying God, and it doesn’t require us to sin against God.
Again, Paul is laying out a general principle here; like the Proverbs, he is telling us how we should behave in the normal state of things.
And the general principle is this: God, in his common grace, has allowed human governmental structures to exist in order to suppress criminality and to encourage good citizenship—to provide security, for the good of the people living under those governments. Of course some governments corrupt this goal, and become “a terror to good conduct”. That’s not the situation he’s speaking about here.
God gives authority to those in power in order for them to be servants for our good—to protect those who do good, and to carry out at least some measure of God’s wrath against those who do wrong. It’s not the full measure of God’s wrath—that will be carried out by God himself on the day of judgment—but it is a measure of God’s wrath.
For example, in France today, you won’t go to jail for having a conversation about Jesus with a friend. You will go to jail if you murder someone. Generally speaking, this is how it works. So the first reason why we submit to the governing authorities, Paul says, is to avoid the wrath of God against sin, which the government has at least some hand in carrying out. We submit to the government for our own safety and well-being, and for the safety and well-being of our neighbors.
The second reason is much simpler: we submit to the governing authorities for the sake of conscience. If the laws in place are meant to provide protection for those who do good and punish those who do wrong, then obeying those laws is simply the right thing to do, and God calls us to do what is right—to flee sin, in all of its forms, even if we consider those forms to be harmless. We obey traffic laws, not just for the safety of the other cars around us, but because we want to obey God. In Psalm 32 David talks about how his bones wasted away, how his strength was dried up, when he knew he had disobeyed God and hadn’t acknowledged his sin. A clean conscience is restorative; a clean conscience before God gives us rest.
We obey the law, even if we think no one will see and there will be no consequence for us or for anyone else, because we want to honor our God through obedience to him, in every aspect of our lives—even the most inconsequential.
Submission as an Expression of Love (v. 6-7)
So we submit to the governing authorities, firstly, because God has given them the authority they have. We submit to them to protect us from God’s wrath (which is in some measure executed by them) and to enjoy the common grace he brings about through them. We submit to them for the sake of our own conscience.
Lastly—and this one may be the most difficult—we submit to our leaders as an expression of love. V. 6:
6 For because of this you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing. 7 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.
Why do I call this submission an expression of love? Because he is showing us what it looks like to offer ourselves as living sacrifices to God, in response to his grace to us in Christ; and the through-line that drives our sacrifice, as he established in chapter 12, v. 9, is Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. He’ll explicitly return to this love just after, in chapter 13, v. 8. This isn’t a change of subject.
It’s pretty interesting: he acts like an accordion here. He begins with the area of our lives over which we have a good deal of influence—our lives with one another in the body of Christ (12.1-13). Then he widens the scope and includes those over whom we have less influence—our neighbors, those people who surround us (12.14-21). Then he widens it even further, and speaks of those over whom we have very little influence at all—the governing authorities (13.1-7). Then he squeezes back in again, speaking about our neighbors (13.8-14). And finally he goes back to where he started, bringing us back to our lives with one another in the church, particularly those over whom we have massive influence: believers who are weaker in their faith, whom we can teach how to live for Christ (14.1-15.7).
In all of those contexts, no matter what our level of influence, the motivating factor behind all we do is love—love for God and love for one another. Obviously, this love will look and feel different for those in power than it will for our neighbors or for those in the church; but even our limited interactions with them should be guided by the same love for God, which should produce in us (as weird as it sounds) a love for our leaders.
What will this love look like in practice? Paul gives us an example: paying our taxes (which in part provide for our leaders’ revenue), and respecting and honoring them.
Now of course they’ll probably never see this; Emmanuel Macron won’t know if you show him respect in the way you obey the law or pay your taxes or speak about him. But it doesn’t matter. God will see it, and so will other people. No matter what you may personally think about our president, Paul says that he is (in the limited sense of the word) a “minister of God,” that is, God has given him the authority he has to fulfill a certain function in our society. We may disagree with the ways he goes about fulfilling that function; but we are called to respect him as the one God has put in place to fulfill it.
It is very possible to express disagreement and even discontent in a respectful way, in a way that honors him. One simple example comes to mind: you’re sitting with other believers, and someone starts complaining about something or other that the president has done. And you’re all in agreement: the president made a decision, and it was a bad decision. But instead of just endlessly griping, you pray for Macron together: that God would give him wisdom, that God would give him clarity, that God would guide his decisions.
Love should also motivate us when we pay our taxes—love for God, who tells us to be subject to the governing authorities (that’s why he says in v. 6 that we pay our takes also for the sake of conscience); love for those authorities, who are ministers of God to fulfill their function in society; and love for our neighbor, who will benefit from the services those taxes provide, just as we will. It doesn’t matter whether we agree in every point with how those taxes are put to use. What matters is that because we are submitted to King Jesus, we can submit to those he put in power over us.
Conclusion
Now I know that some of you have been listening to this without listening to this; the second you saw that this was the subject of today’s text, you turned off your brains and started imagining something else, waiting until for me to finish. I get it; this is a text that is so far removed from your natural way of thinking that it seems easy to dismiss.
So let’s just remove the question of the government for a minute. This text doesn’t just address our attitude towards the government, but our attitude towards authority in general.
Our problem here isn’t fundamentally with the government, no matter what government we’re talking about. We have two main problems, and we’ve had them since Genesis 3: we have a problem with pride, and we have a problem with trusting that our God is a good God.
We want to be our own masters, because despite all the evidence to the contrary, deep down we think that we are better masters than God is—otherwise he wouldn’t ask us to do such ridiculous things, like submit to the governing authorities. We want to be our own masters because we’re not entirely sure that God is actually a good God, because he asks us to do things we don’t want to do—even sometimes things that will be painful for us.
But Paul presses hard against that pride and mistrust in this passage. To our surprise, he tells us that authority, at its core, isn’t what we think it is: authority is a good thing. God exercises his authority with infinite wisdom and perfect justice, often through human authority—whether it’s the authority of the government, authority at work, or authority in the home. So because we know we can trust in him, we can submit to them.
This is how Jesus himself lived. He accepted God’s authority, exercised through human means, even when it literally killed him. He knew what would happen if he accepted God’s authority over his impending crucifixion, and he said as much. In Luke 22.42, he prays, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.”
Why did he accept his Father’s authority? Because no matter how painful it was for him personally, he knew that God’s authority was good, and he knew that God’s plan was good. Christ knew that his death would bring about an eternity of joy for himself and his people—all of us who have received forgiveness of sin through his sacrifice for us. In the moment, submission to God’s authority may cost us everything; in the light of eternity, what we lose is nothing compared to what we gain. Because God is our authority, because he cares for us, we don’t need to fear losing anything for the sake of our obedience to him. It’s worth it, and we what we gain through obedience to him is far more than what we stand to lose.
We can submit even to imperfect authority, because God’s authority is good, and his wisdom is infinite, and his justice is perfect. In the normal state of things, this is what he calls us to do. And when the state of things becomes abnormal—when the authorities prohibit us from obeying God, or demand that we sin—we submit ourselves to God’s authority for the same reasons: because his authority is good, and his wisdom is infinite, and his justice is perfect.
In both cases, our attitude towards those in authority—the attitude that the French around us will see—is a powerful testimony of the gospel’s power, because they will see something unusual in us. They will see our desire to be humble, and to give to each what he is owed: taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed. They will see the change God has brought about in us—they will see our “renewed minds”—and God will use it for his glory.