SUNDAY DEVOTION: Submission to Authorities

How should Christians live in a world gone mad?

In his epistle to the Christians in Rome, Paul commanded them to submit to governing authorities:

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God's wrath but also for the sake of conscience. For because of this you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing. Pay to all what is owed to them: taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed.

Romans 13:1-7 ESV

Consider that these governing authorities were the same Romans who would soon engage in a bloody persecution of Christians, a persecution that would cost Paul his very life.

So that’s that, right? Christians must obey the government no matter what? I believe it is more nuanced than that, for two reasons.

First, whereas the early Church lived in an imperial dictatorship, where the word of Caesar was law, today we live in a representative republic. According to the US Constitution, supreme executive power is retained by the people and delegated to representatives we elect on our behalf. It is therefore imperative for conservative Christians to be involved in all facets of government, whether holding our elected leaders accountable, helping elect new leaders, or standing for office themselves.

I remember the push to excise Christian ideas from the public square that started in the 1960s and reached its fruition in the 1990s. “You can’t legislate morality,” we were told. Many conservatives adopted this perspective, agreeing that public institutions should be values-neutral. Unfortunately, such a thing is impossible. Nature abhors a vacuum. If we do not promote our values, then someone else will promote theirs. Today’s public square is entirely controlled by a new secular religion that preaches tolerance, diversity, equity, and an incessant promotion of racial strife and deviant sexuality.

The idea that America is based on Christian ideas which should be reflected in our laws and culture was common and noncontroversial from before the founding of our country until about ten or twenty years ago. However, now it is pejoratively labeled “Christian Nationalism” and denounced as if it was the second coming of Nazism. Nevertheless, it is still the calling of conservative Christians — as voters and as lawmakers — to structure our society according to the moral framework we believe is true.

Second, there are clearly times when resistance to government is permissible. The Book of Acts records the reaction of Peter and John to being commanded by Jewish religious authorities to stop preaching the gospel of Christ:

So they called them and charged them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus. But Peter and John answered them, “Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge, for we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard.”

Acts 4:18-20 ESV

Clearly there are times when it is permissible, even necessary, to disobey government edicts. I think everyone believes this in their hearts. Many believe that Sara Brady was justified in taking her children to Kleiner Park despite Meridian’s lockdown order. Many more believe that Rosa Parks was justified in remaining in the front of a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. There are few who doubt the rightness of our Founding Fathers signing the Declaration of Independence against the British Crown. Nobody would condemn anyone in Europe who risked their lives to hide Jewish families from the Nazis. Today we honor the stories of Christians in regimes such China and Iran who practice their faith in secret lest their governments arrest them.

Our Founding Fathers drew inspiration from the work of British political philosopher John Locke. In his Two Treatises of Government, Locke wrote:

"The people have no other remedy in this, as in all other cases where they have no judge on earth, but to appeal to heaven: for the rules, in such attempts, exercising a power the people never put into their hands, (who can never be supposed to consent that any body should rule over them for their harm) do that which they have not a right to do.

Or, as Thomas Jefferson wrote on his own seal, “Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.”

According to this perspective, the American Revolution itself was an appeal to Heaven, calling upon God to judge the rightness of their cause. Victory meant that God had vindicated that appeal, and the two centuries of prosperity that followed could be seen as evidence of God’s favor.

Right now our task is to exercise the power we have as citizens and voters to promote our values in the public square. We support laws banning abortion and child transgender surgeries because we believe that children are created in the image of God, and endowed with inherent human dignity. We urge lawmakers to shrink the size and scope of government, because we believe that excessive bureaucracies are only harmful to human liberty. We support the Second Amendment, because we believe all people have a God given right to defend themselves from those who would do them harm.

I think nonviolent resistance can be justified, as in the case of Sara Brady or the parishioners in Moscow who were arrested for singing outdoors. However, God gave us minds that can reason, so we should use them to intelligently pick our battles. I can understand the exuberance of protestors who took an unauthorized tour of the US Capitol on January 6th, but the fallout from that decision has been very bad for our country. Resist wisely!

There is still so much more we could be doing in the political realm. Christian conservatives have barely scratched the surface of the potential influence we could have in this country if all of us were involved in the process of governing. The future belongs to those who show up. The time to create a safe and prosperous society for our children’s children is now.