Romans 13:3-4

“ For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil.Now wouldest thou not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise from the same; for he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for it is not in vain that he beareth the sword, for he is a minister of God, to execute just wrath upon him that doeth evil. ”

If revolt is a crime, and a crime which cannot fail to receive punishment, it is because the power whose authority it attacks is a divine delegation in the midst of human society, and is charged with a moral mission of the highest importance; hence the for.

The good work is not submission, and the evil work is not revolt. Paul means by the one the practice of justice, and by the other that of injustice, in general, in the whole social life. The state is called to encourage the doing of good, and to repress the doing of evil in the domain which is confided to it. This domain is not that of the inward feelings, it is that of external deeds, of work or works, as the apostle says. It matters little which of the two readings (the dative singular or the genitive plural) is preferred; the first is better supported.

After this general declaration, the apostle takes up again each of the two alternatives. And first that of well-doing, Romans 13:3 b and 4a. The verses have been badly divided here. The first proposition of Romans 13:4 belongs still to the idea of Romans 13:3, that of well-doing.

No doubt it may happen, contrary to what the apostle says, that the virtuous man falls under the vengeance of the laws, or becomes a butt for the unjust dealings of the magistracy. But it remains true that in this case good is not punished as good. An unjust law or a tyrannical power make it appear falsely as evil; and the result of this suffering unjustly endured will certainly be the reform of the law and the fall of the power. Never has any power whatever laid down as a principle the punishment of good and the reward of evil, for thereby it would be its own destroyer.

The praise of which the apostle speaks consists, no doubt, in the consideration which the man of probity generally enjoys in the eyes of the magistracy, as well as in the honorable functions which he is called by it to fill.

Ver. 4a If it is so, it is because magistracy is a divine ministry, instituted for the good of every citizen (σοί, to thee), and because, though it may err in the application, it cannot in principle deny its charge to assert justice.

Ver. 4b The other alternative: evil-doing. The power of the state is not to be feared except by him who acts unjustly.

The verb φορεῖν, a frequentative from φέρειν, to carry, denotes official and habitual bearing.

The term μάχαιρα, sword, denotes (in opposition to ξίφος, the poniard or straightedged sword) a large knife with bent blade, like that carried by the chiefs in the Iliad, and with which they cut the neck of the victims, similar to our sabre. Paul by this expression does not here denote the weapon which the emperor and his pretorian prefect carried as a sign of their power of life and death the application would be too restricted but that which was worn at their side, in the provinces, by the superior magistrates, to whom belonged the right of capital punishment, and which they caused to be borne solemnly before them in public processions. It has been said that this expression was not intended by the apostle to convey the notion of the punishment of death. The sword, it is said, was simply the emblem of the right to punish in general, without involving anything as to the punishment of death in particular. Is not Philippi right in answering to this: that it is impossible to exclude from the right of punishing the very kind of punishment from which the emblem representing this right is taken? It is improper to bring in here the idea of the grace of the gospel. For at the very time when the state is carrying out on the criminal the work of justice to which it is called, the church may, without the least contradiction, carry out toward the same man the work of mercy which is divinely confided to it. Thus Paul devotes to the destruction of the flesh (1 Corinthians 5:4-5) the same man whose salvation he labors to procure against the day of Christ. And Peter tells us of men who perished when judged according to the flesh, but to whom the gospel is preached that they may live in spirit according to God. Experience even proves that the last punishment of the law is very often the means of opening up in the heart of the malefactor a way for divine grace. The penalty of death was the first duty imposed on the state at the time of its divine founding, Genesis 9:6: “Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed; for God made man after His image.” It is profound respect for human life which in certain cases enjoins the sacrifice of human life. The question involved is not that of simple social expediency, but that of keeping up the human conscience to the level of the value which God Himself attaches to the human person.

The last proposition is exactly parallel to that with which the apostle had concluded the first alternative, that of good (Romans 13:4 a). When the magistracy punishes, no less than when it rewards, it does so as God's agent and vicegerent on the earth (διάκονος, servant).

In the expression ἔκδικος εἰς ὀργήν, an avenger for wrath, there is not, as might be thought, an unmeaning pleonasm. The meaning is: an avenger by office to satisfy the demands of wrath, that of God, the only wrath perfectly holy. The expression ἔκδικος might be used here in a favorable sense: to render justice to him who is trampled on; comp. Luke 18:3; Luke 18:5; Luke 18:7-8.