Romans 13 - Introduction

CHAPTER 13.

There is not a word to indicate how the transition is made from the discussion of the duties of Christians as members of one body, especially the duties of humility and love in chap. 12, to the special subject which meets us in chap. 13 the duty of Christians in relation to the civil authorities. There is nothing exactly like Romans 13:1-7 elsewhere in Paul's epistles, and it is difficult not to believe that he had some particular reason for treating the question here. The Christians in Rome, though mainly Gentile, as this epistle proves, were closely connected with the Jews, and the Jews were notoriously bad subjects. Many of them held, on the ground of Deuteronomy 17:15, that to acknowledge a Gentile ruler was itself sinful; and the spirit which prompted Pharisees to ask, Is it lawful to give tribute to Cæsar or not? Shall we give or shall we not give? (Mark 12:14) had no doubt its representatives in Rome also. As believers in the Messiah, “in another King, one Jesus” (Acts 17:7), even Christians of Gentile origin may have been open to the impulses of this same spirit; and unbalanced minds, then as in all ages, might be disposed to find in the loyalty which was due to Christ alone, an emancipation from all subjection to inferior powers. There is here an apparent point of contact between Christianity and anarchism, and it may have been the knowledge of some such movement of mind in the Church at Rome that made Paul write as he did. There is perhaps nothing in the passage which is not already given in our Lord's word, “Render to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's, and to God the things that are God's”; yet nothing can be more worthy of admiration than the soberness with which a Christian idealist like Paul lays down the Divine right of the state. The use made of the passage to prove the duty of “passive obedience,” or “the right divine of kings to govern wrong,” is beside the mark; the Apostle was not thinking of such things at all. What is in his mind is that the organisation of human society, with its distinction of higher and lower ranks, is essential for the preservation of moral order, and therefore, one might add, for the existence of the Kingdom of God itself; so that no Christian is at liberty to revolt against that organisation. The state is of God, and the Christian has to recognise its Divine right in the persons and requirements in which it is presented to him: that is all. Whether in any given case say in England in 1642 the true representative of the State was to be found in the king or in the Commons, Paul, of course, does not enable us to say. Neither does he say anything bearing on the Divine right of insurrection. When he wrote, no doubt, Nero had not yet begun to rage against the Christians, and the imperial authorities had usually protected the Apostle himself against popular violence, whether Jewish or pagan; but even of this we must not suppose him to be taking any special account. He had, indeed, had other experiences (Acts 16:37; 2 Corinthians 11:25 ff.). But the whole discussion presupposes normal conditions: law and its representatives are of God, and as such are entitled to all honour and obedience from Christians.