Romans 13:1-7 — A Biblical-Theological Background

It is taken for granted that Romans 13:1-7 is the formative text in the New Testament on civil authority and proper submission. Many people proceed in debates over Christian civics as if it is the only thing that the Bible has to say about politics at all.

This will not be a whole exposition of Paul’s doctrine of the earthly magistrate and citizen, but we will confine ourselves to a biblical theological angle on Paul’s doctrine, inquiring what meaning he invests in the concepts such as authority, God’s servant, the sword, and divine judgment-wrath in the civil sphere. Part 1 will be a brief overview of a “biblical theological” background. That is actually an immodest title. A serious biblical-theological study of this subject would actually be more vast than is realized in our day. This will only be a cursory glance.

What I will argue is that,

God has ordained the office of civil magistrate to carry out temporal justice, such that the Christian citizen offers to it a submission that is constant and contented, yet as to a provisional authority and therefore not an unqualified submission.  

In order to show the true nature of this civil obedience, we will proceed in the following order: (1) the context of Romans as a whole; (2) the structure and grammatical features of 13:1-7; (3) the Old Testament shadows of the dutiful citizen; (4) how this exhortation relates to divine justice in the doctrinal section; (5) how this divine justice exemplified in the civil sphere can function as a motive for Christian submission; (6) parallel texts in the New Testament, and then finally (7) integrating the text with life. Part 1 here will only cover 1-3, or the biblical-theological foundation.

Romans 13:1-7 in the Context of the Epistle as a Whole

However tempting it may be to show how Christ is the fulfillment of the royal office, this is not something that Paul addresses here, or anywhere else in this letter. It would be more faithful to the context to show how 13:1-7 fits into the overall tone of the hortatory section (12:1-15:13)1 given the most relevant doctrinal foundations that have come before (1:18-11:36). The words that begin 12:1 not only signal transition from doctrine to exhortation, but indicate that the doctrine expounded by Paul will function in some way as an informing motive for all of the practical instruction to follow.2 As to the transition from 12:21 to 13:1, Moo may be correct that this is abrupt, “with no explicit syntactical connection.”3 Granting this, we will still be able to discern a common theme. 

If the date proposed by Longenecker, accepted by Waters,4 is correct (57-58 AD), then Caesar at this point meant Nero. That his persecutions against the Christians of the city was still in the future should not affect our interpretation. Assuming the divine inspiration of Scripture, we infer that God knew that several Roman emperors would commit atrocities against his church, and yet saw fit to include this exhortation in the letter. When comparing the potential reasons for Paul writing the letter, it may seem at first glance that 13:1-7 hardly fits. However the Jew-Gentile tensions may shed some light. The previous emperor Claudius had expelled the Jews from the city in 49 AD for what was conceived as a disturbance over “Chrestus.”5 At this point there was already precedence for viewing this new sect as antisocial. Thus we cannot overlook that admittance of Jewish believers back into the church, as the edict was rescinded, brought to Paul’s mind the importance of showing that Christians were good citizens.  

The Text Itself—Structure and Grammatical Features

13:1-7 is a tightly packed argument and is a unity. Several verses are clauses of the sentence in the prior verse. Longenecker sees four divisions which I find compelling: 1. Opening exhortation (1a); 2. Primary theological argument (1b-2); 3. A series of logical and practical supporting arguments (3-5); 4. Specific applications (6-7).6 There is a textual variant issue in verse 1. In the majority of MSS we read Πᾶσα ψυχὴ which raises the question of Paul’s emphasis. Why every “soul” rather than every man or all of you? At any rate, in the order first appearing in Papyrus 46, the adjective “all” is connected in the dative plural to the governing authorities: πάσαις ἐξουσίαις ὑπερεχούσαις. The first is the prefered reading, having the far greater witness in the early tradition. 

Barth and Cullmann have argued that the ἐξουσίαις of 13:1 are indeed political rulers, but that the word also points to “angelic powers that stand behind the state.”7 One difficulty of this position is the resultant logic. Either these angels are: (1) all elect angels; (2) all demons; or (3) some combination thereof. If the first, then all earthly governments are pure extensions of the Kingdom of Christ, even if only in an eschatological sense. If the second, then we would have to agree with Gregory Boyd and others who see all human government and its activities as demonic.8 The third position would at least fit more comfortably into orthodoxy, but seems to lack either exegetical warrant or practical usefulness. Besides, the whole flow of the text following is to exhort Christians to act in a certain way toward these authorities: ways that make no sense if this referred to angels. Therefore our first order of business is to conclude that “authorities” here means earthly, civil magistrates.9 

A second and third inference that must be drawn has to do with the universality of the command: all such citizens to all such magistrates. In the first place, Christian citizens are subject “also to the wicked and unbelievers.”10 In the second place, this must apply to all forms of civil government, and so to all historical circumstances. Both inferences may be drawn from the way Paul states it in the negative: οὐ γὰρ ἔστιν ἐξουσία εἰ μὴ ὑπὸ Θεοῦ. How we understand the sense of the preposition “by” (ὑπὸ) will determine whether we view God’s relation to the man in office as one of decree, or mere permission, or design of the office, or blessing upon what he does: or some combination thereof.   

The word for “ministers” (λειτουργοὶ) is different in verse 6 than the two uses in verse 4 (διάκονός). Is there any significance to this? In verse 4 the word is the more common for servant, from which we derive “deacon,” while λειτουργός often has the connotation of religious service.11 Viewed in this light, Paul’s words in verses 6 and 7 regarding taxes resemble several biblical texts on the compensation for priests: cf. 1 Cor. 9:13. One last structural decision the interpreter must make in the clause “for this reason” (διὰ τοῦτο). Schreiner argues that this is not merely refering back to verse 5: because of conscience—therefore we also pay taxes. It is rather “more likely general and inclusive … pointing both backward and forward.”12

The Old Testament Shadows of the Dutiful Citizen

Old Testament theology leaves no doubt as to divine sovereignty over even the pagan rulers: “The king's heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; he turns it wherever he will” (Prov. 21:1). God said to Pharaoh, “for this purpose I have raised you up” (Ex. 9:16). He calls “Nebuchadnezzar … my servant” (Jer. 27:6), and likewise the Assyrians, and by extension their king, “the rod of my anger” (Isa. 10:5). Here there is no question that the Jew understood world rulers to be completely under the power of YHWH. Paul never cites any of these, or other well known Old Testament texts, that would have powerfully made his case. On the other hand, Schreiner notes, Paul would not have disagreed with John’s depiction of the state playing the role of the evil beast (Rev. 13), which “stems from Dan. 7.”13

How could there be any Old Testament theology of civil obedience? The Jews belonged to the theocracy and thus were bound to God, and therefore to his anointed; and the Jews only relation to pagan kings was as their captives in exile. So both relationships are very straighforward calling for no hard reflection. However it is precisely the seasons in exile that the Scriptures use to provide exemplars of faithful citizenship. “How shall we sing the LORD’s song in a foreign land?” (Ps. 137:4)

Joseph, Daniel, Esther and Mordecai, and Nehemiah are all examples of God’s people not merely submitting to, but serving in, the secular governments. Even so, what do we see in their cases?

With the exception of Nehemiah, all were shown to go against, defy, or subvert, in some way, the ordinary rule of those they served. The three Hebrew boys were a dramatic example of this. When Shadrach, Meschach, and Abednego were ordered to bow down and worship the image of the king, they chose death over idolatry. While not insiders, the Egyptian midwives and Rahab were cast in a positive role for disobeying their respective tyrants.

On the other hand, the people in Babylonian exile were instructed: “But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare” (Jer. 29:7). While Beale and Carson see Paul’s logic rooted in the Jeremiah 29 passage, as well as the several divine sovereignty passages in Daniel, they must go to Wis. 6:1-11 and 6:5-8 to find a text from the ancient Jews that balances out the divine appointment of secular rulers with the accountability of these same rulers to God.14

We may also consider the offices of priest and prophet in relation to the king. When the likes of Samuel, Nathan, and Amos reproved the king, or when the priests reached out against Uzziah to prevent him from exceeding his bounds, were they being insubordinate to God’s appointed authority? Were they setting themselves up in place of the king? Not many would make that argument. Instead it may be said that these offices, and their boundaries, belong to the Old Covenant alone and so are irrelevant to secular societies. That would be the argument of today’s more radical Two Kingdom view; but to the degree that this is so, such accounts could no longer be a backdrop for Paul’s understanding in any meaningful sense.

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1. It is difficult to distinguish between the hortatory section proper and Paul’s closing greetings and travel plans. They overlap at points. 15:13 closes off the last line of thought that is not overlapping at all. 

2. Waters provides an angle on this by referring to 12:1ff as “the moral demands that rest upon those who have received the ‘righteousness of God’ by faith alone”; Biblical Theological Introduction to the New Testament (Wheaton: Crossway, 2016), 192.

3. Douglas Moo, The Epistle to the Romans (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 790-91.

4. Waters, BTINT, 171

5. Waters, BTINT, 171

6. Richard M. Longenecker, The Epistle to the Romans (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016), 954, 55

7. George Eldon Ladd, A Theology of the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993), 477.

8. cf. Gregory Boyd, The Myth of a Christian Nation (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005), 21-22

9. John Murray recognizes the rationale for Cullman’s argument, focuses on the earthly magistrate meaning, but then never indicates whether we ought to include the angelic reference also: cf. The Epistle to the Romans (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1965), 147.

10. Martin Luther, Commentary on Romans (Grand Rapids: Kregel Publishing, 1976), 179.

11. cf. Luke 1:23; Acts 13:2; Rom. 15:16, 27; 2 Cor. 9:12; Phil. 2:17; Heb. 1:7, 14; 8:2; 10:11

12. Thomas Schreiner, Romans (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1998), 685.

13. Schreiner, Romans, 688.

14. G. K. Beale & D. A. Carson, ed. Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007), 681-82.