The politics of Paul and the way of Jesus as seen in Romans 13 [Peace and the Bible #17]

Ted Grimsrud—March 25, 2024

The Apostle Paul was a follower of Jesus. And his social views actually complement Jesus’s rather than contradict them, contrary to what many Christians have believed. In this post I offer a detailed look at the infamous passage in Paul’s letter to the Romans that, one could say, has launched many ships and other weapons of war. Romans 13:1-7 often serves as a counter-testimony in Christianity to the idea that Paul may have taught a principled nonviolence in agreement with Jesus. As well, Romans 13 is often seen to go against the idea that Paul understood Jesus’s peaceable way as normative for Christian social ethics.In reading a number of writings where Christian thinkers argue against pacifism, I discovered that in every single case—across a wide spectrum of theological positions—those who reject pacifism cite Romans 13:1-7 as a major reason. I will show why this text should not be read as counter to pacifism.

Setting the context for Romans 13:1-7

Our interpretation of Romans 13:1-7 should begin with reading these verses in light of their broader biblical context. Our passage is not the only place in the Bible where the political Powers are addressed. From Egypt in Genesis and Exodus, then Assyria, Babylon, Persia, and down to Rome in the book of Revelation, the Bible shows empires rebelling against God and hindering the healing vocation of God’s people. The entire Bible could appropriately be read as a manual on how people who follow Torah in seeking to love God and neighbor negotiate the dynamics of hostility, domination, idolatry, and violence that almost without exception characterize the world’s empires.

Romans 13:1-7 stands within this broader biblical context of antipathy toward the empires. If we take this context seriously, we will turn to these Romans verses and assume that their concern is something like this: given the fallenness of Rome, how might we live within this empire as people committed uncompromisingly to love of neighbor? Paul has no illusions about Rome being in a positive sense a direct servant of God. Paul, of course, was well aware that the Roman Empire had unjustly executed Jesus himself (and, according to tradition, in time executed Paul as well). As evil as these Powers might be, though, we know from biblical stories that God nonetheless can and does use the corrupt nations for God’s purposes—nations that at the same time remain under God’s judgment.

In his letter to the Romans, Paul surely had this biblical sensibility in mind as he addresses Jesus’s followers in the capital city of the world’s great superpower—the entity that had executed Jesus. Paul begins with a focus on the perennial problem related to empires—idolatry (see my previous post, “Paul’s critique of idolatry”). He discusses two major strains of idolatry in chapters 1–3: (1) the Empire and its injustices that demand the highest loyalty and (religious) devotion and (2) a legalistic approach to Torah that leads to its own kind of violence (witness Paul’s own death-dealing zealotry).

However, Paul believes these universal problems provide an opportunity for him to witness to the universality of God’s healing response. Indeed, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Nonetheless, all may find found salvation in Jesus. The sovereignty of hostility to God ultimately bows to the sovereignty of God’s healing love. In Romans 4–8 Paul further develops this message of the mercies of God—reflected in Abraham’s pre-circumcision trust in God that serves as our model (chapter 4), in God’s transforming love even of God’s enemies (chapter 5), in Paul’s own liberation from his idolatrous “sacred violence” (chapter 7), and in the promise that creation itself will be healed as God’s children come to themselves (chapter 8).

Chapters 9–11 involve Paul’s deeper wrestling with his own experience as a Jew who had failed to recognize God’s mercy revealed in Jesus. However, Paul’s failure (and the failure of many of his fellows) ultimately did not stop the revelation of God’s mercy. God’s electing mercy will have its merciful conclusion even with the unfaithfulness of so many of the elect people. Finally, in chapters 14–16, in response to this certainty about God’s mercy, Paul sketches the practical outworking of living in light of this mercy—all for the sake of spreading the gospel to the ends of the earth (i.e., “Spain,” 15:28).

The two chapters I didn’t mention, Romans 12 and 13, should be read in the context of this broader flow of thought in the book. The two chapters make up a single section in the structure of Romans. Chapter 12 begins with a call to nonconformity, motivated by the memory of the mercies of God, and finds the expression of this transformed life first in a new quality of relationships within the Christian community and, with regard to enemies, in suffering. The concept of love then recurs in 13:8-10. Therefore, any interpretation of 13:1-7 that is not also an expression of suffering and serving love must be a misunderstanding of the text in its context.

Reading Romans 13 against the tradition

So, let us look more closely at the actual passage, 13:1-7, itself. First of all, I think we should pay attention to what these verses do not say—and recognize the importance of the verses that come immediately before (“overcome evil with good,” 12:21) and after (“owe no debt but love,” 13:8) that provide positive content for what Paul thinks about the governing authorities and how Jesus followers should respond to them. We should also remember that the words Paul originally wrote had no verse or paragraph notations—those were added later. So, actually, 13:1-7 is not an autonomous section but should be read together with the verses immediately before and after. These are some the key points Paul makes:

(1) Paul calls for a measured subordination (not unilateral submission) in relation to government. These verses begin with a call to subordination, not literally to obedience. The term here reflects Paul’s notion of the ordering of the Powers by God. Paul speaks of the state here as one of the “Powers” (“authorities”). These Powers are the structures of human social life that in some sense have their own reality. They often rebel against God while also serving necessary functions of helping social life to function. As a Power, human government is meant to serve an ordering function and is an inevitable part of human social life; it’s neither inherently good nor inherently bad—but it can turn bad. Subordination is significantly different from subjection or unconditional obedience. For example, Christians who (like Jesus) refuse to worship Caesar and even actively resist Caesar’s oppression but still accept Caesar’s unjust punishment may be said to be subordinate even though not submissive or obedient.

(2) Paul rejects any notion of violent revolution. The immediate concrete meaning of this text for the Christians in Rome (Jew and Gentile), in the face of official anti-Judaism and the rising arbitrariness of the Imperial regime, is to call them away from any notion of violent revolution. We should remember that at the same time that Paul wrote these words, Jewish Zealots in Jerusalem were approaching the point of actively and violently resisting Roman rule, a revolt that came to a head a decade or so later. That revolt led ultimately to Rome’s destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 CE. Paul, in contrast, calls for a nonviolent attitude toward even a tyrannical government.

(3) Paul also relativizes the affirmation of any particular government. While they oppose violent revolution, these verses also do nothing to imply active moral support for Rome (or any other particular government). Paul here echoes Revelation 13, a text often contrasted with Romans 13. Both passages advocate subordination in relation to whatever governing authorities are in place—even along with the implication (clearer in Revelation) that this particular government is quite idolatrous and blasphemous. Both texts imply affirmation of nonviolent resistance to the injustices of the governing authorities after the fashion of Jesus—especially read in the broader context of the arguments in Romans and Revelation.

(4) God orders the Powers—a different notion than ordaining the Powers. Paul does not write that God creates or institutes or ordains any particular governments, but only that God orders them. When the text says that God orders governments, it means God uses them to provide stability in human life. We could say that by God’s permissive providence God lines them up with God’s purpose. This sense of “ordering” implies that God’s participation in human life is much more indirect than often understood. All states are “ordered” by God and thus in some sense serve God’s purposes. Even the worst of states still provide for some level of order that helps human social life to continue and to serve at least some human needs—(e.g., the provision of food and water, public sanitation, “the trains running on time”). However, no states are directly blessed by God as God’s direct representatives, least of all the Roman Empire that executed Jesus and so often acted so violently.

(5) In “executing wrath on the wrongdoer” (13:4), the governing authorities are part of God’s providential work. However, this work is indirect, and Paul is being merely descriptive and does not imply anything morally positive about such a role. As the biblical story throughout makes clear, the working out of wrath does not mean that those who are faithful won’t be hurt by the governing authorities. And it also implies no particular virtue on the part of those who “execute the wrath.”  These dynamics are imprecise and often also serve the purposes of evil. At the same time, in a general sense, it does serve human wellbeing when the governing authorities discipline genuine wrongdoers.

(6) Nothing here speaks to Christians themselves as participants in the state’s work. The functions described in 13:3-4 do not include any service that the Christian is asked to render. The “things due to the authority” listed in 13:6-7 do not include any kind of participation or service. Whatever it is that the state does, Paul is not here advocating Christians themselves having a responsibility to perform those tasks—especially if the tasks violate the call to neighbor love. This point will become clearer when we ignore the chapter division between chapters 12 and 13 that was not part of Paul’s original letter. Then we may note that 12:19 insists that the taking of “vengeance” is not for Jesus’s followers—the very work the governing authorities are said to perform in 13:4. Again, Paul is simply being descriptive of how governing authorities operate and not offering a constructive argument for Christian political involvement. He does this in order to warn against violent revolution and to re-emphasize the Christian call to love the neighbor (which is the focus of the verses just prior to and just following 13:1-7).

(7) Paul calls for discernment. “Pay to all what is due them” (13:7) echoes Jesus’s call for discernment. Jesus’s call to “give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s” tells us to be sure not to give Caesar the loyalty that belongs instead to God (a loyalty that includes the commitment to love all neighbors at all times). In 13:7, Paul writes, “render to all what is due them” followed in 13:8 by asserting that for his readers “nothing is due to anyone except love.” Clearly, Paul’s intent here is to emphasize that the only criterion that truly matters in discerning Christian ethics is the criterion of love of neighbor. Only when what Caesar claims is due to him is part of the obligation of love does it become a legitimate task for Jesus’s followers.

(8) Romans 13 is consistent with the Sermon on the Mount. The logic that uses Romans 13:1-7 as a basis for participation in coercive practices relies on a disjunction between Romans 13:1-7 and the Sermon on the Mount. However, there is no disjunction. Both Romans 12–13 as a unit and Matthew 5–7 instruct Christians to be nonviolent in all their relationships, including the social. Both call on the disciples of Jesus to renounce participation in vengeance. Both call Christians to respect and be subordinate (in the sense of not resisting with violence) to the dynamics in our fallen world where governing authorities might use the sword to bring about a kind of order amidst disorder. However, both texts make it clear that Jesus’s followers are not to accept that the wielding of the state’s sword could serve their own calling to bring healing to the world.

Romans 13:1-7, when read in light of Paul’s overall theology, may be understood as a statement of how the critical subordination of Christians contributes to Christ’s victory over the Powers. Christians do so by holding together their rejection of Empire-idolatry with their commitment to living nonviolence. Paul suggests, in Romans and elsewhere, that his readers’ most radical task (and most subversive) is to live visibly as communities where the enmity that had driven Paul himself to murderous violence is overcome. Jew and Gentile are joined together in one fellowship, a witness to genuine peace in a violent world.

Living free from idolatry

Such reconciled and reconciling communities empower a freedom from the Powers’ idolatry. These are some of the guiding convictions from Romans 12–13 that may shape how people can live out such freedom:

• Nonconformity to the Roman world fueled by minds that are transformed, being shaped by God’s mercy shown in Jesus rather than by the culture’s “elemental spirits.”

• Humility and shared respect in the ministry of the faith community that recognizes and affirms all the gifts of those in the community.

• Active love for one another leading to a renunciation of vengeance and a quest to overcome evil with good rather than heightening the spiral of violence with violent responses.

• Respect for God’s ordering work in human government that, fallen and rebellious as it may be, still serves God’s purposes.

• A commitment to do good (and follow Jesus’s model that recognizes that genuinely doing good as defined by the gospel could lead to a cross) and to repudiate temptations to seek to overcome evil with evil through violent resistance.

• Work at discerning what belongs to God and what is allowable to be given to Caesar.

• An overarching commitment to authentic practice of Torah, summarized (following Jesus’s own teaching) as love of neighbor (13:9). Here in Romans, as in Jesus’s Good Samaritan story, loving the neighbor includes loving the enemy.

Paul’s peaceable politics in a fallen world

I want to close with a few brief reflections on how this analysis of Paul might be applied to our present.

(1) No to Empire. We are challenged to apply Jesus’s radical ethic to our political life. With the awareness of Jesus message as political, we are sensitized to see the entire Bible from the creation story to the New Jerusalem as a critique of Empire and as a guide to faithful resistance to Empire. We seek to hold together two uncompromisable convictions: resistance to Empire and commitment to pacifism. Resistance without pacifism ends up only heightening the spiral of violence and serving the domination of the fallen Powers. Pacifism without resistance validates the stereotypes of the cultured despisers of pacifism—parasitic, withdrawal focused on purity, irresponsible—and leaves the Domination System unchallenged. One key lesson to learn from Paul, Jesus, John of Patmos, and the other prophets is how to discern, how to recognize the self-serving propaganda of rulers, how to recognize the dynamics of “lording it over” and to insist on the norm of servanthood as our key criterion for political discernment. Such a criterion should foster a sense of profound suspicion not only toward the more obvious imperial moves of the overt militarists but also of the liberal “soft imperialists” and their “humanitarian interventions.”

(2) No to violent resistance. We must not let the Empire set our agenda or determine our means of resistance. We must not, in seeking to overcome evil, add to the evil ourselves. We learn from Paul that for those who would walk with Jesus, what should determine our agenda in relation to Empire should not be anger and hostility. Nor should it be a desire to wrest the steering wheel from the right-wingers through force and “get the U.S. Empire back on track as a benevolent superpower.” The true problem with Empire is not that some empires are not benevolent enough in their domination. It is the practice of domination itself. So, ultimately whatever resistance to Empire that hopes genuinely to operate in harmony with God’s intentions for human social life must repudiate domination itself. Resistance that simply leads to more domination ultimately is not nearly radical enough.

(3) Yes to communities of resistance. According to Paul, what God brings forth in response to human brokenness and the oppressions of the nations and their empires are communities of people who know God’s peace and share that peace with all the families of the earth. The formation and witness of these communities leads ultimately, in the biblical story, to the healing of the nations. Paul emphasizes the significance of these communities being made up of reconciled enemies. In his response to Rome’s hegemony, Paul works tirelessly to create an alternative social reality, the ekklesia (Greek for “assembly” or “church”), that practices the way of Jesus within the Pax Romana. These communities, made up of reconciled Jews and Gentiles, provide a context for human flourishing. This kind of politics remains the call for followers of Jesus today who live within the Pax Americana.

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