Covid-19 and the year 2020 was a hard time for most people on many different levels. Society was shut down, for good or evil. Jobs lost. Drug and alcohol use skyrocketed. People were encouraged to turn on their brothers and sisters for merely going outside. It was a dark and lonely time for most of America. Yet, I would say that it was the best of time for the church. It has been a long time since something drove the churches of America to have to stand for something in public. Covid was the calling card. The church was the front line for those who wanted to stand up for freedom and the rights of people. It also showed everyone who the real churches were. Those that coward before the government and followed their every dictate was probably not a true church of Christ, at the minimum it is a weak church. Now this post may come as a surprise with everything I just said, yet I see it all incredibly links. This post will be followed by another post about an American’s duty to defend/defy. But for now, I want to look at the biblical argument for a Christian’s response to government.
I’ve written before how man is a social creature and as such, he is also a political creature. Man is born into a society and must learn how to conduct himself. There are norms to follow, along with customs and laws. The question arises on who gets to set these norms, customs, and laws. Does it come from the people, the ruler, or from God Himself? To play my hand from the beginning, I would say that all things ultimately come from God as He is the sovereign Being of the Universe. All things come from Him, go through Him, and move to Him. Nothing happens outside of God’s control.
On the motive level, who enacts these things, is it the people or the ruler? Looking through history, the answer comes from both sides. Going back to the time of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle there were a variety of political systems for a nation to choose from. In The Republic, Plato sees the progression of government from the good to the perverse, while Aristotle compares them in Nicomechaen Ethics: monarch to tyrant, aristocracy to oligarchy, polity to democracy. Each of these governmental styles were enacted at different times. Plato argued that it was normal for a society to move from one to another. Hard times called for a good man to stand up and be king. He would die and leave the kingdom to his son who was a tyrant. The good men of the city would stand up against him and install an aristocracy in the king’s place. When their sons took over, they would devolve into an oligarchy as they governed only for themselves. The people would then rise up against them and united into a polity, which would then devolve into a democracy and anarchy. A good man would need to rise up again to unite the people and start the cycle all over again. This is very much a man-centered view on the topic. Doesn’t mean that it is wrong, but it is only looking at it from the perspective of man.
Throughout scripture, God speaks many times about the men that He is going to put into power. It starts with Adam over all of creation. When he screwed up, he was told that there would be one to come to bruise the head of the serpent. Abraham was also called to be a great nation as a man with no children. Pharoah in Exodus was put into power to be hardened in order to show off God’s glory. Saul was called to be a great example of a bad king to Israel. David was called to lead Israel and be a picture of Christ. David also acted as a tyrant when he took Bathsheba and killed her husband, but Christ came from that line. Nebuchadnezzar was called to punish Israel for their unbelief and to bring them into captivity. Esther was called to save her people. Along with every judge in the book of Judges was called in order to save the people from their sins. In all of these cases, it is clear that God is raising these men up to do their job, whether it be for good or bad means.
Then we have the New Testament and Pentecost and the establishment of the church. If there is no longer Jews or Greek, male or female, how are we to act to our governing authority? There are two main passages that deal with this topic in the New Testament, 1 Peter 2 and Romans 13. Looking at these passages, I would say they both say the same thing and I think handling one will take care of the other. They both have similar context and say similar messages. They were written to different people: one to Gentiles, the other to Jews, but that shouldn’t change the application of the texts in how to understand what they are saying. I think Romans 13 is a more complete argument, so I’ll choose to handle that one. So first off, what is the actual text? Verse 1-5
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 judgement.
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. (ESV)
Notice that I put a paragraph change between verses 2 and 3. This is not because it is a change in subject, but I wanted to separate the conclusion from the premise. The first section deals with the command and the second deals with the reasoning behind it. The first section should be clear. The entire book of Romans is about how God is sovereign. He is over all of creation, the hearts of men, and the salvation of His people. He even hardened His chosen people Israel for a time in order to bring the gentiles into salvation (He didn’t ask the Jews or the Gentiles if they wanted to be hardened or to be included). That is the point of chapters 9 through 11. If God is sovereign over all these things, Paul is doubling down and extending his thought here is chapter 13. God is also sovereign over all governments, pagan and Christian. All authority comes from God.
The next section gives justification for submitting to authority: because they are there for our good. They are there to punish evil and reward good. Now, who gets to define what good is? The correct answer would be God. God decides what is good and what is evil. That is His prerogative because He created it all, and it is all subject to Him. So, what is good and what is evil? To take a simple view, when God created everything, He said it was all good. Then sin came in and there was now a category for evil. So, everything is good except for those things that God says is sin. As with a father, a mother, husband, pastor, if a governing authority ask you to sin, you are not to do it. This should be plain and simple.
What if the authority asks you to do something that you don’t like? Like it is not sin, but you don’t think the authority has the authority to ask you to do that, what should you do then? Authorities have always worked through laws. In the early days, laws were the commands of the king. Currently, to keep it simple, in America, laws are bills that have been passed. So let’s take any king of old and say that they made a law, hypothetically, that one people can kill anyone who might attack them. No judge. No jury. If you feel like someone MIGHT attack you, you can attack them first and kill them. This would be similar to the law Queen Esther/Mordecai wrote on behalf of King Ahasuerus in Esther 9. This law is borderline sin. This may actually be condoning unjust murder of people. Between civilized people, this law would not be just whatsoever. The Greeks would say that this is wrong. This is similar to the movie The Purge. I haven’t seen it, but I’m pretty confident this is the premise. For one (or two) days, all crime is legal. For one day, you can kill any enemy. Just go for it. Now, if this law is made, are you justified in following it? God did this same thing with a pagan king in order to protect His people. Yet at a later time in history, this would be seen as terribly unjust. I could not vote for this law to go into action. I would fight it because I think it is wrong. Yet God used it for the good of His people. God took something that would be judged by most people as bad and injust and used it for the good of His people. This reminds me of Romans 8:28, “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.”
Now to those who don’t know me, I am basically a functioning cripple. I can walk, but if I do too much, I’m going to hurt something, and my heart might stop. I literally played walking basketball (meaning I didn’t run while playing) two weeks ago and my knee is still hurting. I’m pretty sure I tore my meniscus. My heart was 15 beats per minute away from my ICD from going off and laying me flat. This verse is a massive comfort to me. This verse gives my life meaning. If I wasn’t assured by God that my life would work out for good, I don’t think that I could continue living. I remember a grand total of 3 days since the age of 15 that I have been pain free for a whole day. I’m 32 now.
I have to believe that God has a plan. Everything will turn out for my good because I love God. I don’t have to work about anything because I have this promise. I am only responsible for my response to what He gives to me. As such, I believe that He has a plan when it comes to the government above me. So, if the powers to be in my country sign into law something as petty as that I need to paint my house yellow, for no reason, I would say that it is right and a duty for a Christian to obey this law.
Now, I know that a lot of people would disagree with these last few paragraphs. The divine right of kings has been a hotly debated topic for at least 500 years. Protestant resistance theory would be one such theory dealing with this topic. Read a book on it if you want to know more. Glen Sunshine recently wrote a book called Slaying Levithan that is about this. I watched a video of him talk about it. It seemed to present this point well. I don’t agree with it even though I am protestant. To deal with this verse though, I want to consider what I would say to the best counter argument to my argument.
To me, the best counter argument to my point is to look at these verses as qualitative statements, categorical statements, or definitions. Now the way that these types of statements are used today have changed through history. I am thinking of these terms as the way that Aristotle would think of them. In his book Categories, he goes into how to separate all things and the first thing he considers is substance. The substance of an object are its qualities. This whole discussion does go down a rabbit hole, so to cut it short: part of the substance of a chair is that it is used for sitting on. So all things that are sat upon would be classified as a chair. Now there are different kinds of chairs that can further be classified just as a chair would fit under the category of furniture or wooden things. Basically, it is taxonomy. Using that as a definition may actually help fewer of you than I would like. Anyway, hopefully I’ve explained this enough. Moving along and back to the main point.
So, how is this a qualitative statement? We would start with the first verses that all authority is from God and is good. What do we know about good things? We like them, or at least we should if we are trained correctly to like the things that God likes. So what does good authorities look like? Verse 3 through 5 address this. Good authorities are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad… finish it all the way through. Verse 3 through 5 define what good authority looks like. If that is the case, then anything that appears to be an authority that is not good would actually not be an authority. Once it stops performing the definition, the qualities, or the job of the object, it no longer is that object. To go back to the chair, once a chair is no longer fit to be used to sit upon, it would cease to be a chair. If you lay down and sleep on a chair, it is no longer a chair. It is now a bed. The same is true for an authority. Once the authority stops acting like a good leader, it ceases to be an authority.
Another way that it has been put is in terms of contracts. This is a later argument in the historical timeline, but it fits in and deserved to be mentioned. The authority makes a deal with the people to do such-and-such things. Once the authority breaks the contract, there is no longer a responsibility to follow the authority. This is some of the reasoning that the founding fathers made about the king of England and Parliament.
This argumentation style started in Aristotle, was cemented in the church by Aquinas, was the rallying cry of countless reformers. Used extensively by Bacon, Locke, Kant, and Rousseau for their political philosophy. It is the basis for American politics. And it has nothing to do with this verse taken in the context of Romans. This is actually ripping the verse out of its history, literal, and grammatical context.
First, Romans was written in the time of Nero. I don’t know if you’ve heard of him, but he was a bad dude through and through. If I were Paul writing this book and I wanted to have these verses to be taken as a qualitative statement, I would have contrasted them against Nero. He would be a great example of how not to lead. Paul could have written these verses the way that he did and then contrasted them to Nero, “Submit to good authority unlike the guy that is the current emperor or any of the guys that came before him. You don’t need to follow those guys” I would hold up Suetonius’ The Twelve Caesars as my evidence. The section on Nero starts out as listing all the good things he did, which basically included paying off anyone who might want to kill him or bribing people to like him. He also lowered taxes even though he continued to spend and send the country into bankruptcy. There is only 9 pages detailing the “good” things that he did, which are all neutral actions at best. These 9 pages are followed by 25 pages of escalating debauchery that started off when he was a boy chasing women and got WAY worse from there. There was no time in his life that he was a good man or a good ruler. He just appeased some rich people at the beginning by giving them money.
As far as the words in the book of Romans, if these verses are taken as a qualitative statement, how does this work with God’s sovereignty? If He puts a good man in charge, we are to obey him. But, if He puts a bad one in charge, it is our responsibility to remove him from power? Doesn’t seem very sovereign to me. This makes it seem like God made a mistake and we need to fix it for Him. Some would even say that it is our duty to fix it for Him, like God can’t take care of it for Himself. God has shown throughout scripture that when He is done with an evil ruler, He takes them out of power: Pharoah in Exodus, Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar in Daniel, and King Herod in the book of Acts. God is fully in control of who is in power. It is not our responsibility. We are in charge of our reaction to who in puts into power.
I could see someone making the argument that Christians are the means that God uses to displace bad rulers. Sure. Then why would it clearly say in scripture that God places bad rulers in positions of power to do His will? Why don’t we have a command saying that we are to displace bad government? Like anywhere. Corrupt rulers cause more harm to the world throughout history that anything else: Hitler, Mussolini, and Mao to name a few. If they aren’t real rulers, why would we have dealings with them? Why aren’t the people of Israel in the Old Testament told to conquer the whole known world? Why are they only given their small chunk of land? David should have conquered everyone if this was the case.
All this to say, I see no good way to understand this section of Romans 13 other than that God puts all authority into power and all things will work out for our good to those who love God. We are to trust Him through it all. If one were to deny God’s sovereignty over the lives of men, then I could see how one to understand these verses this way. But there is no way that someone who believes in the doctrines of grace (Calvinism), could believe in this. If God is sovereign over who goes to heaven, He is also sovereign over those who are in power. Who are you, pot, to question the potter.
Now, to follow this up, my next post is going to be able why American Christians have a duty to defy/defend some governing authorities.
ESV Study Bible. Crossway Books, 2008.