Romans 13:1-5
1 Every person is to be in subjection to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God.
2 Therefore whoever resists authority has opposed the ordinance of God; and they who have opposed will receive condemnation upon themselves.
3 For rulers are not a cause of fear for good behaviour, but for evil. Do you want to have no fear of authority? Do what is good and you will have praise from the same;
4 for it is a minister of God to you for good. But if you do what is evil, be afraid; for it does not bear the sword for nothing; for it is a minister of God, an avenger who brings wrath on the one who practices evil.
5 Therefore it is necessary to be in subjection, not only because of wrath, but also for conscience’ sake.
Introduction
This is a popular passage used by many Christians today to explain how we should respond to the measures being imposed by governments in response to the Covid-19 virus. They say that, when the government tells us to close down our churches and tells us how we should worship, we must obey. However, they tend only to quote the first two verses and ignore verses 3 to 5. In doing so they ignore the full explanation given by Paul about why we should obey the governing authorities. Furthermore, they ignore the rest of God’s word where we find other scriptures with something to say about the matter.
So, let’s examine what the scriptures say about obeying governing authorities. Are we to obey the governing authorities at all times?
The Main Text
I want to start with the popular passage from Romans that I have set out above. As we can see in verse one, all of the authorities have been established by God. Part of God’s plan for mankind is to have authority structures. One example of this can be found in Ephesians 5:22-33 where Paul describes the authority structure in marriage. One of the functions of His authority structures is to provide order instead of chaos. God is a god of order. Each God ordained authority has its functions and its limitations; they have to follow God’s design for them and not exceed or step out of His design. But, because of sin, they don’t always abide by God’s design. For instance, when a husband abuses his wife, he has stepped out of the purpose of his authority because his authority in the marriage is meant to be a benevolent one. In fact, all of the God ordained authorities are meant to be benevolent. Those in authority are always meant to act in the best interests of those they have authority over. Furthermore, they are meant to act in accordance with God’s laws and precepts for the way that all of us are meant to live. And we see this in verses 3 to 5.
In verses 3 to 5 Paul shows us what the governing authorities exist for. Firstly, we see that they are not there to harm those who obey God’s commands. That’s what Paul means by good behaviour. Instead, they are there to deal with those who do evil, or those who behave badly. Secondly, they are there for our good. In other words, they are there to help us live godly lives. They should not do anything to stop us from obeying God. And thirdly, they have the authority to punish wrong-doing (those who practice evil). Remember, as far as God is concerned, evil doers are those who disobey His laws; those who rebel against Him. So overall, governing authorities are established by God to uphold his laws and precepts. If they don’t do this, they have stepped out of God’s purpose for them and have become illegitimate.
As I showed above regarding authority in marriage, because of sin, all of God’s ordained authorities are capable of stepping out of God’s purpose for them. And this is true of governing authorities. We only need to look at history to find examples of this. One of the most obvious examples is the Nazi government in Germany. The Nazi authority completely stepped out of God’s purposes and instead of stopping evil they propagated it and caused immense suffering for millions of people, especially the Jews. When the Nazis conquered the Netherlands they persecuted Jews, rounded them up and sent them to concentration camps to be exterminated. Now, when this happened, many Dutch Christians disobeyed the Nazi authority and hid and protected Jews and rightly so. However, if they had interpreted Romans 13:1-2 in the simple way that many Christians do today, then they would have obeyed the evil laws of the Nazi’s and helped them to kill the Jews.
So, I put it to you again, are we to obey the governing authorities at all times? At this point I think it would be helpful if we examined some more scriptures.
Other Scriptures
1 Peter 2:13-17
This text is similar to Romans 13:1-5 in as much as it is about submission to authorities. Peter does the same as Paul by telling Christians to submit themselves to civil authorities and then goes on to explain what God expects those authorities to do and it is similar to what Paul said to the Romans. But there is something additional and significant that Peter adds. We find this in verse 16 where Peter tells us to live as people who are free. So, under governing authorities we are meant to be free and not in bondage. Governing authorities must not take away our freedoms unless we use our freedoms to do evil. For instance, I am not free to murder someone. So, if I do murder someone, the governing authority is entitled to take away my freedom by putting me in prison.
Acts 5:29
This verse is found in a passage of scripture in which the Apostles were brought before the Jewish authority in Jerusalem after they had taught the people in the temple. The Jewish authority had told them not to do this but the Apostles had disobeyed them. Peter and the apostles responded to the Jewish authority by saying, “We must obey God rather than men.”
The Apostles set out a very important principle through this incident. If a governing authority tells Christians to disobey God, then Christians should disobey the authority and obey God instead. Obeying God takes precedence over obeying governing authorities.
Daniel 3:16-18
In this passage, three devout Jews tell Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, that they will not obey one of his decrees. Nebuchadnezzar had set up a golden idol and instructed all of the Babylonian citizens to worship it. But Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego knew that the king was telling them to disobey God’s first commandment. The king had exceeded God’s purpose for him by trying to get believers to sin. Once again, we learn that if a governing authority tries to get believers to disobey any of God’s laws or precepts, they are to disobey that authority in this regard.
Daniel 6:6-10
In this passage, we see that Darius, the king of Persia, introduced a law that made it illegal for Daniel to pray to God. But Daniel disobeys the king because Darius was trying to force Daniel to disobey God and Daniel could not do that. This is another example of a governing authority exceeding its authority by introducing a law that was at odds with God’s law. When this happened, Daniel knew that he must put obedience to God before obedience to man.
Examples From History
I have already given an example above regarding the Nazi authority but there are others. For instance, in the last century, in America there was a time when black people were treated as lesser citizens. They were segregated and denied the same rights as white people. And some Christians rightly understood that this was unbiblical. So, they peacefully but deliberately broke some of the laws of the state authorities in order to bring about change. Most famous among these Christians was Martin Luther King who led the civil rights movement. If he and other Christians who worked with him had interpreted Romans 13 the way many Christians do today, they would have gone along with the evil system of segregation.
Another example from recent history comes from the Communist authority in the former Soviet Union. Under that authority, churches had to be registered with the state before they were allowed to exist. However, through the registration system, the Communist authority would control and interfere with the churches making them conform to the Communist ideology. However, some Christians rightly understood that this was against God’s precepts. They knew that under God’s design, the state is not allowed to interfere with the functioning of the Church. Because of this, they disobeyed the Communist authority and did not register. This forced them underground where they survived until Communism collapsed. The churches that did this remained pure but those that obeyed the Communist authority were corrupted and became ineffective.
I could give more examples, but the ones I have used should make us think more carefully about how we should behave in respect of governing authorities.
Conclusions
If I was to ask you what the Church is and how it should function how would you answer me. To answer me correctly you would have to turn to the scriptures, because it is the divinely inspired word of God that tells us. In other words, the scriptures tell us what the church is and how it should function according to God. The scriptures provide us with God’s will for the Church. And as I have shown above, one of the functions of governing authorities is to uphold God’s laws and precepts. So, if any governing authority tells the Church to do anything that is contrary to God’s design for the Church, what should we do? Should we obey or disobey? From what we have seen in the scriptures above, the answer is to disobey. As the Apostle Peter said to the Jerusalem authority, “We must obey God rather than men.”
Let’s take another example. If the governing authority was to introduce laws or measures that were harmful to some or all of the people under their authority, should we obey their laws or not? For instance, the Nazi authority introduced the practice of systematically exterminating Jews using a poison. Should Christians at that time have co-operated with this practice? The answer to this is easy because of the 6th Commandment. But what if the harm being done was not so clear cut. What if the governing authority introduced a drug to the population knowing that it could kill or maim? Remember, one of the purposes of governing authorities is to protect us from evil. So, if a governing authority introduces a law or measure that does harm or enables evil, we should not obey it.
And what if a governing authority encourages us or tries to force us to participate in a lie and we know that it is a lie. Should we go along with it or not? Again, the answer is easy because of the 9th Commandment and because we are always meant to speak the truth.
I could give many more examples but when considering the question of whether or not to obey the governing authority we have to remember the following principles:
- The scriptures show us that there are circumstances when we must disobey the governing authority.
- God has ordained certain functions and limitations for every authority and when they go beyond them, they become illegitimate and God will deal with them as He wills.
- Obedience to God supersedes obedience to men.
- All authorities are subject to God’s laws and precepts.
- Sometimes God allows illegitimate authorities to rule over us for a while to test our faith, for judgement or for some other divine purpose.
Having said all of that, we must not forget that, if the governing authority is fulfilling its divinely ordained function, we must obey it. We should never engage in treason or violent confrontation with a governing authority. If the authority is doing wrong, God will deal with them; He puts them in place and He removes them. No matter what the governing authority does, we are to be gracious and respectful to it. We can speak the truth to the authority but we must do so peacefully and in love.
And finally, we need to apply all that I have said above to the present events because it is highly relevant. Governing authorities all over the world are telling us that we are in the midst of a dangerous viral pandemic. As a result of this they have given themselves extraordinary powers, they have taken away many of our freedoms and they have imposed draconian measures on us. And as part of these measures, they have interfered with the functioning of the Church. For the first time in history, they are using every means foul or fair to inject every, man, woman and child with an injectable substance. And they want all of us to obey everything they are doing without question. Nothing like this has ever happened before on this scale. So, we need to use the biblical principles set out above to answer the question, should we obey everything that they are telling us to do? To help us answer this question we need to have a knowledge of eschatology and to ask the following questions:
Are they telling us the truth?
Is there a pandemic? What do the stats tell us?
How dangerous is the virus? What do the stats tell us?
Are the laws and measures being taken based on true science?
Is there open debate on the matter or is censorship being used?
Have the authorities exceeded their God given function in any way?
Are all of the laws and measures justified?
Is the Church being suppressed?s the church been suppressed?
Are the authorities doing harm to anyone?