EPISODE 105 ROMANS CHAPTER 13 "Christians and their Government"

Welcome to Share the Word. In the New Testament, the book of Romans is the longest and most detailed explanation of Christian theology. In chapter 13, the apostle Paul's focus is getting believers to understand that they should live in submission to the government authorities because God put them there for His purpose. And that's only the trailer clip. Listen closely. Paul, Romans chapter 13, Christians and their government.

In the 1750s and 60s, there was a lot of debate in America over if and when it was acceptable in God's eyes to rebel against your government. At that time, of course, the 13 colonies were under the direct control of England and ruled by its king, George III. Increasingly, a lot of things about that arrangement rubbed the American colonists the wrong way: being taxed too heavily on food items like sugar and tea, being forced to quarter British soldiers in their homes at great inconvenience and expense, allowing the growing population in the colonies no representation in English Parliament, and more issues. The Continental Congress drafted 27 grievances, in fact, against the British king's government, which were largely ignored.

But still, many Americans at the time, overwhelmingly a Christian and religious people, did not believe it was biblically permissible to rebel against the crown, largely because of the passage we're going to look at today in Romans chapter 13. After years of no resolution to the complaints, tempers were flaring. A line of no return was crossed when occupying British troops opened fire on unarmed Americans in 1770 in a square in Boston, Massachusetts, a hotbed of revolutionary fervor. And then, of course, the attack at Lexington and Concord, when the British Army tried to confiscate arms and munitions from Americans. That was the final straw. You just can't decide to take guns away from Americans, they discovered.

I know if I had been alive in the 1770s and, say, the pastor of a church then, it would have been a huge matter of discussion and prayer as to whether or when the British government crossed the sufficient line, and armed response could be justified as self-defense. The reason it was such a difficult decision is because, in Romans chapter 13, the apostle Paul wrote to early Christians this: Let every person be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and those that exist are instituted by God. Therefore, whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Do you want to have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what's good, and you will have 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 wrongdoers. Therefore, one must be in subjection not only to avoid God's wrath, but also for the sake of conscience. Then Paul adds, For because of this, you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to these very things. Pay to all what is owed 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. That's the first seven verses of our chapter. Since chapter 12, we're now in the practical section of Paul's letter, and what could be more practical of a topic than how Christians should relate to their government?

One thing that's very clear throughout the sections in the Bible that inform this topic is that God is a God of order. Order, which requires authority to maintain, is much better, in His opinion, than disorder for people. Order is the foundation of civilization. The things that God has designed for our social good, the institutions of family, the church, and government, all require a respect for authority so they can function in an orderly and productive way. More than respect, really, actual submission, as Paul says here. In this section, twice Paul says that governmental authorities are the servants of God.

In what possible sense could that be true? Well, it's true because they restrain disorder, he says. They are God's servants sent for the purpose of punishing those who do what is wrong, he says. If we want to live in a relatively peaceful environment, we need authority to enforce laws, to punish lawbreakers. It all gets back to God's preference for order. Any government enforcing any kind of order is preferable to chaos and anarchy.

Although, of course, we all would prefer a government that's honest and not heavy-handed in the process of maintaining order. So the general rule is very clear from these instructions: Christians should be good citizens. We should be law-abiding, tax-paying citizens. Remember, when Paul wrote these things, he was living as a citizen of the Roman Empire. Laws were very strictly enforced. Order was priority number one.

It's partly for that reason that he and his team were able to travel all over the place relatively safely. When he was arrested, as he was on more than one occasion, he was able to state his case before civil authorities, as in Corinth, where he was acquitted before the Roman proconsul Gallio. Or if you remember from Acts 25, when he was being held by the Roman authorities in Caesarea, he told the inquest convened by the governor, Festus, that so far as he knew, he had not violated any Jewish or Roman laws. But if a court found differently, he would willingly accept their punishment, he said. That's when he appealed his case to Caesar's court in Rome. And all that happened not long after Paul wrote these things in this letter about submission to governing authorities.

So he meant what he wrote. He was not a rebel or a revolutionary. He understood the proper role of government, that it was a tool of God for the general good of society, to protect people's lives and property and so on. This wasn't just Paul's personal view. The apostle Peter says very much the same thing in chapter 2 of his first general epistle. He writes there, Be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governors sent by him to punish those who do evil and praise those who do good.

For this is the will of God, that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people. Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God. Honor everyone, Peter said. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor.

Government has the general job of punishing evildoers and encouraging the good, that is the welfare of society. Those who founded the United States wrote about this right up front in the preamble to the Constitution. We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, and so on and so on, do ordain this Constitution, our government. How interesting is it that these leading apostles, Paul and Peter, urged submission to the Roman government, a government that ultimately took their lives? Paul actually said in our chapter that the government does not bear the sword in vain. That's clearly a reference to capital punishment, and it happens to be the way extra-biblical sources record that Paul's own life ended less than a decade after he wrote this letter.

Yet, in an era when the emperor was Nero, Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, better known as just Nero, not exactly one of the good guys of history, the New Testament writers, under inspiration, still tell us, Honor the emperor, the government, because it has an important positive role to maintain order in society. Government officers are God's servants, he says. Respect their office and their authority. Be good citizens. So that's it then? Just buckle under no matter what the government says, whatever executive orders get passed down?

Well, not exactly. There are exceptions. We see these come up four or five times in historical parts of the Bible. For example, remember back in Acts chapter 5 when the early church was growing rapidly in Jerusalem, and Peter and John, two of the most well-known leaders, were called before the authorities. They were warned to stop publicly preaching about Jesus and the resurrection. Did they stop?

You said no, you get ten points. In fact, they told the authorities, even after being beaten, Whether it seems right to you or not, we're going to obey God rather than men. They believed Jesus' Great Commission to share the gospel with everyone was a higher order than the government's edict. It superseded an order from men. They took the government's punishment, but did not stop obeying Jesus. Notice, though, that what they did not do was rebel in some way.

They did not form a Christian militia and start fomenting for an armed uprising. There are Old Testament examples of the same kinds of situation. Notably, in Daniel's time, we can read about this coming up a couple times with government edicts outlawing prayer or saying that everybody had to worship the idol of a king that had been set up. Daniel and his Jewish friends who were in captivity at the court of Nebuchadnezzar and later Darius did not stop their times of worship to the one true God or stop doing the things they'd always done to honor Him and His Word. Again, there were serious consequences from the government, but they followed their conscience and the commandments about not worshiping false gods and took the consequences.

A couple years ago, in some places in America and in Canada, probably other countries as well, during the COVID outbreak, some governments issued orders that there could not be any public gatherings with over so many people. This affected churches. This was the first time in my lifetime that I can remember that I seriously had to think about whether we might be in a situation when it was time to disobey a clear government order. In some places, it was more of a recommendation, but in other states with more heavy-handed state governments and aggressive bureaucrats, big fines were levied against churches that did not shut down. I think in Canada, some pastors even got arrested. I know in other countries, without the constitutional protections in America, government overreach on flimsy bases is used to break up churches or imprison pastors.

So these are real questions facing Christians and will likely only increase. We should be good citizens always, but if issues come up that are clearly cases of having to choose between obeying God and obeying a government, we must obey God. For if there are consequences for doing so, we also should bear the consequences. Fortunately, in America, we still have rights guaranteed to us, and we are able to go to court to adjudicate things like this if the government gets too heavy-handed. And best of all, we have the right to elect different leaders every two or four years. Part of being good citizens is to take advantage of these rights where they exist.

We don't have emperors or kings, at least in my country, although some government officials act as though they are. We have elected officials who are supposed to be public servants. So vote every opportunity you get for whichever person running for office you feel best represents your values as a Christian. No candidate may be ideal, but vote for the one who is better when it comes to important issues that you care about. For me, issues like freedom of religion, freedom of conscience, parental rights, and other issues that you believe affect how you can live out your faith, as well as other issues that are important to you. Unfortunately, there are some extreme groups that self-identify as Christian that are always talking and plotting rebellion against the government.

It's usually nothing but talk, but occasionally one of them does something crazy. The New Testament is very clear that Christians are not to be revolutionaries. Don't get involved in that kind of thing. However, there is a growing movement today gaining traction among the populist wing of the Republican Party that overlaps with some conservative Christian groups who fantasize that Christians can and should somehow take over the American government. Some even believe if their candidate doesn't win, it's okay to rebel. They have more or less appointed Donald Trump as their Messiah, it seems to me.

I hope you can understand from Romans 13 that the extremes of this is a very wrong-headed movement. Let me tell you why. We have seen that the apostles lived under a more difficult government than we have now, by far. Jesus himself lived under both messed up local governments in Jerusalem and in Israel, as well as under the Roman occupation with its heavy-handed administration. His contemporaries in Israel hated the Romans. They tried to enlist his help in the resistance movement, but he was never interested in that.

You might remember they wanted him to say it was wrong to pay taxes to Caesar's pagan government, but he did just the opposite and told his questioners, Render to Caesar what is Caesar's. On another occasion, at the height of Jesus' popularity in Galilee, we saw this back in the Gospel of John, after feeding the five thousand, that miracle, John, who was there, says the people in Galilee wanted to crown Jesus as their king. That would have been a direct challenge to one of the Herods and ultimately to the Roman occupiers. But what did he do? He went away into the mountains to escape them, John says. Jesus had no interest in political power then.

In fact, even when he was being wrongly treated by the authorities, Jesus told the Roman procurator Pontius Pilate, My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my followers would be fighting you right now. Think about that. My kingdom is not of this world. We know what world means, and it certainly involves the political stuff that's going on in this planet. You just can't find any encouragement in the New Testament to try to take over a government or to merge Christianity with a government.

The attempts to do that in history have been disasters. Even in early America, which was heavily influenced by biblical Christianity, the leaders were wise enough to not mix politics, government, and God too closely. Some of the colonies which had state religions did away with them and endorsed the principle of religious freedom. Although principles from God's Word heavily influenced the ideas on which America was founded, the Founding Fathers wisely moved away from the idea of a national religion, as then existed in other countries, and they enshrined the principle of free exercise of religion, which is in our Bill of Rights. That was a good move and has been a blessing to our country and a model to others.

Rather than trying to institute Christian governments, our marching orders from Jesus as followers of His are to try and affect our world by sharing the gospel, by planting churches, by multiplying leaders, to change hearts and minds, as we say. That's what we see playing out on the pages of the New Testament. Putting our hopes in politicians is like leaning on a sharp stick. Yeah, vote for the best people who offer themselves for office. Run for office yourself if you feel so directed. But don't imagine that God has called politicians, as some of the self-appointed modern-day apostles and prophets in the Christian nationalist movement are doing, to establish the kingdom of God on earth.

That's a very serious misunderstanding of the role of the church, as well as really messed up eschatology. In my opinion, that movement is not only a big distraction to God's people today who get sucked into it, but it's self-defeating because, frankly, most people in this country, in America, do not want any part of a right-wing Christian theocracy, and they will turn out in large numbers to vote against that. The real Messiah, Jesus, is coming back one day to establish a kingdom on this earth, and maybe soon. Our highest mission till then is the Great Commission he left us with: share the gospel with everybody on the planet, teach those who accept it all the things I taught you. So let's stay focused on what Jesus actually instructed us to do, what he and his apostles modeled for us.

And let's pray for our country's leaders as we're instructed in the New Testament, so that we can live quiet and peaceful lives, as we're told, as we wait for Jesus' return. Let's be good citizens. Let's vote if we have that opportunity. There's nothing wrong with supporting candidates you favor. It's a great privilege to vote if we live in a representational democracy. But never lose sight of the higher calling we have.

Christians must be involved in winning people to Christ, influencing their communities by being lights in the world. We don't benefit from getting preoccupied in fighting political battles, trusting in politicians to somehow save us. I've often thought, what if over the last 50, 60 years, as the culture wars, it's called, has raged in America, Christians had focused as much or more on the things that Jesus actually assigned us: sharing the gospel, planting churches, serving our communities in love, influencing hearts and minds, than on the massive investments of money and energy in political movements? My hunch is we'd be in a better place today as a society. Paul ends chapter 13 where he has urged early Christians to be good citizens with these exhortations: The hour has come for you to wake up from sleep, for salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed.

The night is gone, the day is at hand, so let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness or sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling, jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires. He was urging the early Christians in Rome to live out their faith boldly before their non-Christian friends, their family, their neighbors. Unbelievers need to see the positive difference Christ has made in our lives in order for our faith to be attractive and believable to them. By salvation is nearer to us than when we first believed, he meant ultimate salvation, the return of Christ.

Live in the light of Christ's return, he is urging. That's our real hope. As we learned from Thessalonians, the return of Jesus has always been imminent and our blessed hope. But certainly, we're much closer to it now than the original recipients of his letter ever were. And if you've been a Christian for a month or a year or 50 years, you're that much closer to Christ's return today than day you first believed too. All kinds of things are happening in our world today at a very rapid pace.

Many seem to be converging signs pointing to us being in the season of Christ's return. So, Paul's advice is, wake up and focus on the things Jesus called us to. Live out clearly your Christian testimony. Influence your corner of the world. Let's share our faith more boldly and lovingly and win hearts and minds for Christ. Let's show his love and our hope with the hopeless and increasingly desperate people around us.

Let's avoid any distractions that drain our energy and resources away from that and remember Jesus' marching orders to us were to share the word about him, what he did, and teach it to everybody everywhere in the world. That's our focus here on Share the Word. Will you join us in this effort to fulfill the Great Commission before Jesus returns? This is Paul for Share the Word. Thanks, Paul. I'd like to take a moment to remind everyone that Share the Word is a Great Commission project focused on sharing the gospel worldwide.

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