These figures may not be exactly right, but I recently heard that President Obama has something like a 40% approval rating, but that Congress itself has a 14% approval rating. We Americans are very good at disliking the government and authorities which, according to popular political theory, we in fact choose for ourselves.
So this week we get to consider how Romans 13 speaks to how we relate to government as Christians. Verses 1-7 speak so strongly about submission to rulers and taxation that some scholars like to think that they were imported into Paul’s text by a later editor. In any case, the verses do seem like a bit of a surprise entry into a new topic.
However, Paul is simply extending what he says in Romans 12:18 about seeking to live at peace with all to living at peace in a community under government. And what he says about taxation is followed with a general principle in verse 8 about paying one’s obligations, recognizing that the highest obligation is love.
I do not see in these verses any room or allowance for the vitriolic verbal abuse some citizens of our country hurl at government leaders of either party. And I especially do not see the possibility of a Christian attack on the idea of government in general (i.e., “government is the enemy”). Instead, we have Paul calling for followers of Christ to demonstrate their trust in God by living peaceable, orderly, and in the verses that follow, loving lives in the society around them.
Paul’s assumption, which appears throughout Scripture, that rulers/authorities are appointed by God and serve His ends, runs contrary both to the delusions of tyrants who believe they rule by some inherent right (by right of divinity in Paul’s own time) and our own democratic conviction that our leaders are chosen by popular election. Instead, leaders rise and fall by the often mysterious workings of divine providence. So what kind of political conversation might result if we began with the assumption that the people in power are people God placed in power for His own reasons?
The text is of course also difficult because along with the assumption that God has placed authorities in power is the further assumption that they do God’s will by upholding good and punishing evil. Yet that was not wholly true even, or especially, in Paul’s time. The cruel and insane Nero was the emperor sitting on the Roman throne, Pilate put Jesus to death, and Herod Agrippa the king over Jerusalem committed incest and was finally kicked out of the city by his subjects. So subjection to an authority does not depend on the authority’s character or political practice.
Of course, there is ample biblical evidence for the justice of resisting authority that opposes the direct will of God or which causes great harm. Paul himself resisted authorities which told him to cease preaching the Gospel.
So this text alone will not settle all our questions about how Christian people relate to and interact with governments. Nonetheless, it makes it clear that governments and authorities have a place in God’s plan and that generally we are to live quietly and peaceably, obeying and respecting those authorities.
The rest of the chapter with its emphasis on love as the sum of the law and a way of life that reflects light rather than darkness carries on the thought that Christians in society are to live in a manner that is irreproachable. We are to be what Jesus told us we are, light in a dark world.