The start of Romans 13 is an important steer from Paul on how Christians should act towards authority. It says:

Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God.

Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves.

I don’t know about you, but I can a think of a lot of leaders who have been, how shall I say, a bit disappointing. It is said that all political careers end in failure, after all.

And that’s before we think of some genocidal totalitarians, like Hitler and Pol Pot. Nero, who was about three years into his reign as Roman Emperor when Paul wrote his letter, would later inflict mass executions on Christians.

Did God really appoint such appalling rulers, and should we obey them?

Let’s step back a moment and dig into what the passage is really saying.

Good citizenship is part of evangelism

John Wesley explains the text by saying:

St Paul, writing to the Romans, whose city was the seat of the empire, speaks largely of obedience to magistrates: and this was also, in effect, a public apology for the Christian religion.

By “apology”, he means an argument for Christianity rather than saying sorry. In other words, Christians should be good citizens as an act of evangelism. In modern times, Christians do a lot of good by living unchaotic lives and keeping out of trouble.

People often look at Christians and think they are good, respectable people who seem to have their lives worked out – and that’s a good thing.

Christians should speak truth to power

In his commentary on Romans, the New Testament scholar Grant R. Osborne says God has established “every single governing authority (probably the individual rulers themselves and not just the principle of government)…

“This is rather startling, for the authorities that exist must include evil governors as well as good… God is in charge and will remove unworthy rulers in his own time.”

Osborne, nonetheless, does not believe that Christians should sit idly by under unjust governments. He writes:

But evil in government calls for prophetic warning rather than active revolt; that is, we must call them to accountability and tell them of judgment to come if they do not follow God and government righteously (as indeed Jesus and the apostles as well as Jeremiah and Amos did with Israel’s leaders).

God comes above human powers

Taking the New Testament as a whole, it’s clear that there are occasions when it’s right to ignore human powers.

In Acts 5, the apostles are made to appear before the Sanhedrin and told off for not following “strict orders” not to preach about Jesus. They replied with: “We must obey God rather than human beings!”

I realise that this cannot be a licence for every random citizen to claim that what they they want to do is from a higher force and therefore OK. It has to be used in a very limited way – e.g. distributing the bible when it has been outlawed or helping Jews flee persecution in Nazi Germany.

Amiel Drimbe, of the University of Bucharest, analysed the views of Christian theologians before 250 AD and found that their answer to whether Christians should obey bad rules is a “conditioned ‘yes’”.

He writes:

Christians are to respect tyrannical rulers at all time, even when they must be resisted. Christians are to obey tyrannical rulers whenever they act justly and in everything that is not contrary to their faith. Christians are to pray for tyrannical rulers sincerely and without ceasing.

There are, however, limits to Christians’ submission to governing authorities. They are to resist any demand that goes against “the rules of Christian life”: a ruler that claims the honour that belongs only to God, acts against the will and word of God, or acts under the influence of the devil, is to be resisted.

Yet there are also limitations placed on their resistance, as there are limitations placed on their obedience. Christians are to resist tyrannical rulers in a manner that is brave, yet respectful, righteous, and peaceful.

At the same time, Romans 13 is not a licence for rulers to do whatever they like because they’ve been ordained by God.

As New Testament scholar N.T. Wright explains:

Tragically, many totalitarian regimes have quoted that passage in order to bully Christians themselves to do things or to collude with things which those Christians knew were not how it should be.

I think of apartheid South Africa as an obvious example.

But actually Paul in that passage isn’t saying that whatever the rulers do must be right. He’s saying that God wants His world to be ordered, to be wisely ordered, because anarchy is always even worse than tyranny.

Tyranny is bad, but anarchy is worse.

And so God wants there to be wise rulers, but at the same time … those rulers need to be reminded that God is God and will hold them to account.