Romans 13
The Authorities
"Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established." (Romans 13:1)
Romans 13 has been used to justify compliance with governments that didn’t deserve compliance, and it’s been used to justify resistance to governments that needed resisting. The history of this chapter’s interpretation is as complicated as any in the New Testament.
What Paul is writing to is a church in Rome that might have been tempted toward either defiance or apathy toward the government. And his instruction is neither. Be subject. Pay taxes. Give honor and respect to whom they are due.
But the chapter doesn’t stand alone. It sits between chapter 12, which says don’t conform to the pattern of this world, and chapter 14, which is about conscience and conviction. And it ends with: put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh.
Submission to authority is a posture, not an absolute. Paul himself appealed to Caesar. Peter said we must obey God rather than men. The early church refused to worship the emperor even when the law required it. Romans 13 is not a blank check to authority. It’s a call to live as people who trust God enough not to be constantly in reactive opposition to every structure around them.
