Paul's attitude toward a person's obligations can at first glance appear somewhat contradictory. He says: if you owe someone something, that debt binds you and requires repayment. Everyone must receive what he has a right to, and this cannot be denied to anyone, whether it is tax, obedience, or simply respect. And immediately he adds: owe no one anything except the debt of mutual love. In fact, Paul evaluates obligations themselves in the context of a person's relation to secular authority, a theme that was undoubtedly very sharp in those days.

Sharp at least because of the rather widespread political messianism in Jewish circles, which regarded the very existence of secular authority as evil and obedience to this authority as sin. Paul does not think so. He says directly that there is no authority that could exist apart from God's will. And this is not a call to blind loyalty, as many would like or, conversely, would not like to think, but the statement of an obvious fact. If God permits one or another authority to exist, then He does not consider it necessary to intervene. As for a Christian's relation to secular authority, here everything is more complex.

On the one hand, one can speak of a "God-pleasing" or "God-opposing" authority as a state institution, in the context of what Paul says, only very relatively. "There is no authority except from God," in the context of world history, and even Roman history, with its palace and other coups, conquests, revolutions, and so on, sounds rather indifferent. If any authority is "from God," then one can speak of legitimate authority only very relatively. But then one can also speak of God-pleasing authority very relatively. Rather one has to conclude that God tolerates any authority until a certain time in order to avoid something worse, and here it is better for a Christian not to interfere. But one can obey any authority only "for conscience's sake"; otherwise obedience loses all meaning.

Any other obedience does not count before God. And if obedience "for conscience's sake" is impossible, then it is more honest before God to refuse obedience to authority. In that way one can at least avoid the hypocrisy of formal obedience to it, and therefore avoid violating at minimum the ninth commandment. And everything a person owes to representatives of secular, or any other, authority, he owes only as a consequence of this obedience "for conscience's sake." But if it is "for conscience's sake," then it must be to the end, so that there is nothing with which to reproach oneself and so that one can answer, also according to conscience, for one's obedience both before people and before God.

Here it is the same Gospel "let your yes be yes, and your no be no." And this concerns all human relationships in general: all obligations flow only from mutual love. Without it, the fulfillment of duty becomes a kind of spiritual, if not psychological, hypocrisy. A fulfillment that spiritually dries up the one who fulfills it and does not benefit the one who uses the fruits of such fulfillment. In the Kingdom such relations are impossible, and the apostle calls Christians in every case to remain inhabitants of the Kingdom, whether this concerns their relation to authority or to one another.

Reasoning about earthly authorities, Paul remains faithful to the witness about the Kingdom, which, according to the Savior's word, is "not of this world." He does not speak of loyalty to any particular authority and does not give preference to any state or social order. Indeed, if, according to the apostle's word, every authority is from God (vv. 1-2), this can only mean that God is indifferent to any particular form of authority, just as He is indifferent to the particular persons connected with the structure of power. Such an attitude toward the state and earthly authorities in general is possible only if the Kingdom and its action in our still not fully transformed world in no way depends on the activity of any earthly authority and is in no way determined by it. If one accepts the Kingdom as something precisely "not of this world," that is, as something that lives by laws having nothing to do with economics or sociology, this approach proves not only natural but the only possible one. The witnesses of the Kingdom, however, have to act in a world where the history of earthly states and governments has not yet ended, and therefore they need criteria for evaluating the actions of this earthly authority and knowledge of how to relate to it.

Here Paul is quite consistent: he, like Jesus Himself, speaks of the possibility for witnesses of the Kingdom to be loyal to any authority in matters that do not go beyond the bounds of "this world," such as taxes, the rules of public life established by the authorities, state institutions, and the like (vv. 5-7). The apostle, as is clear, by no means supports any messianic religious-political movements, whose representatives often denied secular statehood as such, believing that only the Messiah could establish a truly just state on earth, and that precisely this task would be His main one. Such political messianism was widespread in the Jewish milieu at that time, and it is not excluded that views of this kind could also penetrate the Church, so Paul evidently had to remind Christians of the true Kingdom that Jesus brought into the world.

But Paul does define the criterion for relating to the concrete actions of concrete representatives of authority: they are "God's servants" if they act "for good" (vv. 3-4). Evidently the apostle allows that a representative of secular, pagan authority, like any person, can do both good deeds and evil ones. Here too Paul is quite consistent: he does not deny pagans the possibility of knowing the "natural Torah" and following it. If a pagan is guided in his actions by the "natural Torah," then objectively he will not oppose the Kingdom and its witnesses. For the apostle, no authority is sacred in itself; in fact, he is not speaking so much about some abstract authority as about the people clothed with that authority. About people who stand in the same relation to the Kingdom as any person. No more and no less.

The passage about submission to governing authorities always raises many questions and disputes. But the apostle Paul is very specific and emphasizes two things in particular. The first is the necessity of the very principle of authority for every society. This does not mean regarding every person vested with authority as a “higher being,” but recognizing people's need to establish common rules for living together, without which no one can live in safety. Whatever a person's attitude toward other people may be, that person always demands justice and respect for his or her own rights. It is in this sense that the state is a necessary body of rules for the life of a human community.

The second point is also very important. According to the apostle Paul, the state cannot regulate matters of faith. Money and taxes, administration and the courts—all of this may fall within the state's jurisdiction. But every person's individual choice, as well as a person's attitude toward the actions of those in power, belongs to that person. No one has the right to deprive a person of the freedom to call a tyrant a tyrant; no one has the right to dictate what another person must believe.