NOTES for Rom 13:7

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.

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.