Romans 13:1-7
Will Fitzgerald
Kalamazoo Mennonite Fellowship
September 27, 2009
Quiz:
Romans 13:1-7 1 Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God. 2 Therefore whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. 3 For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Do you wish to have no fear of the authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive its approval; 4 for it is God’s servant for your good. But if you do what is wrong, you should be afraid, for the authoritya does not bear the sword in vain! It is the servant of God to execute wrath on the wrongdoer. 5 Therefore one must be subject, not only because of wrath but also because of conscience. 6 For the same reason you also pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, busy with this very thing. 7 Pay to all what is due them—taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due, respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due.
In many ways, these verses seem strange, as if they were pasted in. Paul has made his grand argument, with which I hope you are familiar. God has been working to create a people, a people that includes people from all nations, first through Abraham, then through Israel, then through Jesus Christ, and now through the church. And what does this have to do with the government? And why does he insist that we obey it and pay it taxes?
This is especially true when we consider the kind of government which was in charge when Paul was writing. We may cringe when we see Obama or Reagan portrayed as some kind of demigods, but the Roman emperor literally presented himself as a god; and he certainly had god-like powers to build up and destroy lives. Why should followers of the one true God as revealed through the Son, Jesus Christ, feel themselves subject to a government which falsely usurped the power and honor due to God for themselves?
But it is just this fact—that government had such a big impact on the lives of the Roman Christians, not unlike the impact that government has a big impact on the lives of Christians and non-Christians in 21st century Kalamazoo, Michigan—which compels Paul to write a little about the right relationship between the church and the state. To leave a gap here would be to leave a big gap indeed, and so Paul addresses it—a bit. This is not the final word on the church and the state, but it is an important word, and (of course) it echoes a teaching by Jesus himself about “rendering to Caesar what Caesar is due.”
This teaching is also, I think, more or less a direct conclusion one can draw from Paul’s statement in Romans 12:18 (in the paragraph immediately preceding) “if it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.” It is a good thing to be able to live a peaceable life in which the church can live out its kingdom values. We don’t need to go about stirring things up just for the sake of stirring them up. We are not trying to replace the current government (whether of Rome or Michigan or the United States) with a “theocracy;” this is not our job. Our job is to overcome evil with good, not overcome evil with a sword. We let government do its job, and we should do ours.
So, government asks certain things of us; and sometimes insists on certain things. It may be small things, like not putting up a sign outside a house advertising a church service; or prevents us from buying and selling raw milk. It may be really big things, such as paying a sizable percentage of our money in taxes or participating in the killing of others through the military. The clear teaching here is that, as much as possible, to go along with government, so we can (as I stated) go about our own business of raising our children, loving our neighbor, living our spiritual lives, loving our enemies. We honor Caesar with what Caesar deserves, and we honor God with what God deserves.
And for small things, this is easy enough. For Bess and me, buying raw milk from Indiana is not a moral issue. Perhaps we think that it would be better for the government to not be so restrictive here (even as we understand the health and safety concerns involved). But it’s not hard not to buy raw milk, and so we won’t. And even bigger things, like paying our taxes, we do it because this teaching and Jesus’s teaching makes it clear it’s (at least usually) the right thing to do.
There are certainly times, though, when the government and the church will disagree on a fundamental issue, such as the use of violence against people and against property to achieve goals. And this tension is mentioned explicitly in the passage. My understanding is that Paul is saying that “the sword” is yielded by the government to create a kind of temporary stability within which we live out our lives as the church. It’s not that violence is the right thing to do, in the long run, but only a fool would claim that violence isn’t effective at times for achieving certain political ends, as we have seen in our own country, which was born in violence and maintains its supremacy through violent coercion as well as capitalistic means.
So, we can be thankful for the cover of violent protection that allows us to mean peaceably for worship this Sunday, but this is not the same as agreeing to participate in that violence. We can even be grateful for the bravery of the men and women in our military that put their own lives in harm’s way to protect us, while at the same time deciding not to send our daughters and sons out to die and to kill on our behalf. As Christians, we do not engage in violence, to achieve vengeance or to achieve some political good; rather, we overcome evil with good.
So, as much as possible, we will obey the government; we may even rightfully participate at times. At times, though, we will distance ourselves from participation. We will naturally disagree at times about the points at which we do one or the other. As a church with a strong peace heritage, let us continue to support peace-making and justice-making efforts, understanding that this will be partial. As a peace church, let us remain “non-resistant,” and unengaged in violent activities. Let us remain thankful for those who do serve in the government, including the military, and that we can worship and act out in relative peace. But let us go about our primary task, which is, according to Jesus and Paul alike, to love one another.