Romans 13 has been a critical text in Christian theology regarding how believers should relate to governing authorities. Historically, among some Christians, it has often been interpreted as demanding absolute obedience to governments. However, a closer examination reveals that this passage calls for submission not marked by blind, unquestioning obedience. This article explores how the terms “submission” and “obedience” differ, considers the textual context and historical context of Romans 13, and offers suggestions on how Christians ought to engage with governing authorities in our Constitutional Republic. This article seeks to give counsel for times when governing officials use their positions to advance immoral causes and injustices, encouraging criminal behavior and suppressing righteousness.
1. Context of Romans 13:1–7
The Apostle Paul’s admonition, “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities,” has contextual preparation earlier when Paul exhorts Christians to “be transformed by the renewal of your mind” to be able “to discern what God’s will is” (Rom. 12:2). He expands on what this entails by addressing how (A) believers are to behave as members of Christ’s body (12:9–13), (B) Christians are to behave toward those outside the church, especially “those who persecute you” (12:14-21), (B1) everyone who confesses “Jesus is Lord” (10:4) is to submit to governing authorities (13:1–7), and (A1) believers are to be governed by Christ’s love in every facet of life (13:8–10).[1] Here is a visual of the chiasm.[2]
1. Observe the chiasm. Thomas R. Schreiner follows Jean-Noël Aletti in seeing a different chiasm: A (12:9–16); B (12:17–21); B1 (13:1–7); A1 (13:8–10) (“Church and State in Romans 13: How Universally Applicable Are Paul’s Exhortations?” Paul’s Letter to the Romans: Theological Essays, eds. Douglas J. Moo, et al. [Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Academic, 2023], 285–86).
2. A chiasm is a literary device that shows emphasis by arranging words/phrases/concepts with their counterparts in an ascending and then descending order.
A Love for members of Christ’s body, the church (12:9–13).
B Behave peaceably in the hostile world (12:14–21).
B1 Behave submissively toward governing officials (13:1–7).
A1 Love for members of Christ’s body, the church (13:8–10).
Paul’s deliberate chiastic arrangement of the text aids in seeing Romans 13:1–7 within the larger framework. His chiasm also compels us to recognize crucial words occurring in both Romans 12:14–21 and 13:1–7. Consider these words linking the two passages.
| Romans 12:14–21 | Romans 13:1–7 | ||
| vv. 17, 21 | evil, good | vv. 3–4 | good, evil |
| v. 19 | God’s wrath | vv. 4–5 | God’s wrath |
| v. 19 | vengeance | v. 4 | vengeance |
| v. 17 | repay | v. 7 | repay |
Recognizing these important verbal links between Romans 12:14–21 and 13:1–7 suggests we correctly read these two passages as complementary. Especially noteworthy is Paul’s prohibition:
Repay no one evil for evil but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord” (12:17–20).
The chiasm and word connections beckon us to read Romans 13:1–7 in tight association with Romans 12:14–21 with the two portions mutually informing one another. What we read in Romans 12:14–21 prepares us for correctly understanding 13:1–7. So, in Romans 12:14–21, Paul provides directives concerning how Christ’s people are to behave toward all who are outside the body of believers, including governing officials. We are to bless those who curse us, sympathize with others whether they rejoice or mourn, always endeavor to live peacefully with others, associate with the lowly, never be conceited, never retaliate but trust God to judge rightly, lend aid to those in need, and overcome evil with good. Paul takes these significant general directives concerning how Christians are to behave in relation to people outside the church and applies them to how Christians are to relate to governing authorities.
2. The Distinction Between Submission and Obedience
Christians should always advocate for justice to prevail over injustice, and where injustice threatens, we ought always to appeal for justice, as the Apostle Paul did on multiple occasions.[3] Paul’s conduct aligns with his admonitions to Christians concerning how we should behave toward civil authorities, especially in the letter he sent to the Christians in Rome, the governmental seat of the entire empire.
3. In Phillipi, as a Roman citizen, Paul appealed for the city magistrates, who had arrested and publicly beaten and imprisoned him and Silas without any trial, to come and release them from prison, not secretly, but publicly and officially (Acts 16:35–40). Again, as a Roman citizen, Paul appealed to have the Jews’ charges against him tried before Caesar (Acts 25:6–12).
Romans 13:1–7 begins with the Apostle Paul’s well-known injunction: “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” (Rom. 13:1). On the surface, this seems to imply a blanket command for obedience to government officials, but correctly understanding the verb “be subject” is critical to grasping Paul’s intent. The word used here and repeated in Romans 13:5, translated as “be subject to,” is the same word Paul uses in Ephesians 5:21–22. There Paul first characterizes a body of believers as engaged in mutually “submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ,”[4] and then he begins a new paragraph and topic when he exhorts, “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord.”[5] Neither of these uses in Ephesians 5 substitutes for the verb “obey” or “be obedient,” as if Paul meant to say, “obeying one another” or “Wives, obey your own husbands.” For Paul, “submitting” (hupotassō) is distinguishable from “obeying” (hupakouō). Believers “submitting to one another” and wives “submitting to their own husbands” are distinct and different from “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right” (Eph. 6:1). The words, “in the Lord,” sufficiently bind children’s obedience to God-honoring acts.
4. See Ardel Caneday, “The Myth of Mutual Submission in the Home (Part 1).”
5. Though most Greek manuscripts do not include the verb (hupotassō) in Ephesians 5:22, translators acknowledge that it should be inferred from verse 21 and included in verse 22. Unlike the Nestle-Aland text, the Tyndale House Greek New Testament does include the verb based on the editors’ principles for identifying the text closest to what was originally written.
So, within two other spheres of God’s ordered governance, the church and marriage, submitting is not equated with obeying. We misread Scripture if we read calls for wives to submit to their husbands as demands for unqualified obedience to their orders so long as their commands are not intrinsically sinful (Eph. 5:22; Col. 3:18; 1 Pet. 3:1). Likewise, we misunderstand Scripture if we presume that Christians are to yield “unqualified obedience” to church elders. Rather, the NIV correctly translates Hebrews 13:17, “Have confidence in your leaders and submit to their authority, because they keep watch over you as those who must give an account. Do this so that their work will be a joy, not a burden, for that would be of no benefit to you.”
Thus, in Romans 13:1 and 5, “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities” does not command “unqualified obedience.” Rather, the word entails honor and respect, which the apostle explicitly explains when he admonishes Christians to show “respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed” (Rom. 13:7).
God has appointed multiple “spheres of sovereignty”—the individual, family, employment, church, and state—each one entailing defined authority and self-governance. Enforcing justice and executing retributive punishment for criminal behavior does not belong to individual Christians but to the state and civil magistrates. Justice and vengeance belong to those whom God appointed as governing authorities. Paul explains the governing official’s God-appointed role: “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” (13:4).
Paul wrote his letter to the Christians in Rome, a diverse and persecuted community under the rule of the Roman Empire. The Roman authorities were often hostile to Christians, and many scholars believe Paul’s instruction was meant to address the community’s precarious social and political situation. Christians were viewed as a potential threat due to their allegiance to Christ as “Lord” rather than Caesar. Thus, Paul was not necessarily promoting submission to governing authorities for its own sake but encouraging believers to live peaceably, recognizing that all authority ultimately belongs to God.
Submission, as commanded in Romans 13, is an act of acknowledging the legitimacy of authority and recognizing its role within God’s created order. This does not imply that one is obligated to obey the laws or directives of a governing authority if they contradict God’s higher law. This can be seen in how Peter and John responded to the Jewish High Priest’s and his associates’ command to cease preaching in Jesus’ name and “bring this man’s blood upon us” (Acts 5:28). The two apostles countered, “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29). While they submitted respectfully to the governing religious authorities, they refused to obey when their specific prohibition contradicted their duty to God. Their behavior shows that submission does not preclude civil disobedience when human laws conflict with divine commands.
3. Governing Authority Is From God and Is Not Infallible
We might easily misconstrue the meaning of Paul’s assertion, “For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God” (Rom. 13:1; KJV) to refer to God’s sovereign foreordination of everything that comes to pass. The highlighted verb, ordained, is variously translated as “appointed” (NKJV), “established” (NIV, NASB), and “instituted” (ESV, CSB). Paul’s only other use of the verb is in 1 Corinthians 16:15, where he speaks of Stephanas’s household, “they have devoted themselves to the service of the saints.” The word refers to an appointment or devotion to a task. Therefore, John Murray correctly observes that, in Romans 13:1–2, Paul does not speak merely of “God’s decretive will” but rather of God’s “preceptive will,” which, if the magistrate refrains from executing just judgment against crimes, his failure to carry out justice “would be sinful.”[6] God appoints civil magistrates to execute his vengeance on evildoers (cf. Rom. 12:19 & 13:4).
6. John Murray, The Epistle to the Romans, reprint 1975, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1968), 2.148–49. God’s decretive will refers to everything he enjoins in scripture: “do not murder,” “do not steal,” etc. God’s perceptive will refers to everything that happens under his divine sovereignty, including the breaking of his commandments, as when Jesus Christ was murdered on the cross (Acts 4:27–28).
Government, according to Paul, has a God-given role: to promote good and restrain evil (Rom. 13:3–4). However, history is replete with examples of governments that do the opposite—promoting injustice and suppressing righteousness. Of course, Paul understood this when he wrote these words in his letter bound to arrive in Rome, where Caesar resided. Hence, the apostle’s directives concerning the role of civil authorities implicitly obligate ministers of the gospel but also all Christians to teach our own families and our neighbors concerning our roles as citizens and also to remind those who govern us:
(1) that God appointed them to their seats of governance;
(2) that they are ministers of God for the well-being of those whom they govern;
(3) that justice—punishing evildoers and rewarding doers of good—is their primary role;
(4) that they are in positions of authority not to serve themselves but to serve those for whom they are entrusted with governing.
The apostle’s directives forbid us from engaging in activist rioting, insurrection, and disorder, but they do not keep us from peaceful protestations against injustice. The apostle’s teaching restrains us from retreating from public life within a safe Christian cloister hermetically sealed from the wicked influences around us—including evil-doing elected officials, magistrates, and bureaucrats who become tyrants. Instead, the Apostle Paul obligates us Christians to confront evil governing officials with holy rebukes to remind them of their God-appointed calling, even removing them from their roles by recall or scheduled election.
4. Christian Responsibility in Our Constitutional Republic
Paul was a citizen of an empire ruled by a pagan emperor. When writing to Christians in Rome, the emperor’s home, he admonishes them to submit to governing officials whose God-appointed role is to punish evildoers and reward doers of good. That we reside not under an emperor but under “the rule of law” in a constitutional republic does not mitigate the Apostle Paul’s admonition. We also are to submit to civil authorities not only because we fear the magistrate’s wrath, who is God’s servant for good, but also conscientiously, as to the Lord Christ himself. Because greater freedom increases one’s accountability, indeed, as citizens of a constitutional republic, where citizens are invested as the electorate, we can reasonably argue that the apostle’s appeal to submitting from a convinced conscience places responsibilities on us as voters that the Roman Empire’s form of government robbed its citizens.
Yes, God providentially bequeathed to us not only “the power of the ballot” but the freedom to appeal to other voters to join us in the righteous cause to hold magistrates accountable to conduct themselves properly as God’s servants for good. These freedoms obligate us to use our ballot to honor God by calling unjust civil authorities to account. True, our two-party political system has its offensive and restrictive qualities, but God’s providence presents us with a binary choice. Therefore, Stephen Wellum has recently observed correctly that voting is not only a citizen’s duty but a Christian’s responsibility.
As we think about political parties, we must first stand as Christians and not partisans. As a Christian, as I evaluate the GOP, I think it’s a disaster. Yet, there is still within it a direction that is not as anti-human as the Democrat Party. Further, the GOP still allows conservative Christians to influence their Party. So unless we’re going to start another Party, which presently is not viable, we have a binary choice. To sit out is not a responsible option since we lose the influence of our voice entirely. We need to make wise decisions, and for me, the only option is to vote GOP. Donald Trump is not my first choice, and I opposed him in the primaries, but as the candidate of the GOP, he’s the one I will vote for. (Emphasis added)
5. Conclusion: Submission with Discernment
Romans 13 does not demand blind obedience to every decree or policy enacted by a government. In fact, the Apostle Paul’s command is not that we are obligated “to obey” governing officials but “to submit” to them, acknowledging that all authority ultimately comes not from humans but from God. Therefore, our submission to civil magistrates is not absolute. Submission does not preclude civil disobedience when a government’s laws conflict with or contradict God’s moral law. God’s law obligates us to live peaceably, respect governing authorities, pay our taxes, and work for the common good, but we are also called to resist evil, act justly, advocate for justice, and engage responsibly as citizens who call to account civil authorities who betray their roles as God’s servants for good. Thus, our submission to governing authorities requires wisdom to discern when to follow laws and when to resist them in faithfulness to the Lord Christ. Our challenge as Christians is to navigate this tension with wisdom, courage, and a commitment to righteousness in every circumstance.
