Romans 13, Looking At The Government

Here's Romans 13:1-7

Romans 13:1-7 Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God.2 Therefore whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves.3 For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to evil. Do you want to be unafraid of the authority? Do what is good, and you will have praise from the same.4 For he is God's minister to you for good. But if you do evil, be afraid; for he does not bear the sword in vain; for he is God's minister, an avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil.5 Therefore you must be subject, not only because of wrath but also for conscience' sake.6 For because of this you also pay taxes, for they are God's ministers attending continually to this very thing.7 Render therefore to all their due: taxes to whom taxes are due, customs to whom customs, fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor.

I think this is what most Christians focus on and remember, and I think it has to do with our world view .... For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God.2 Therefore whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves....

Some responses to questions. My own experience has been I miss so much because I either take God's Word out of context or I would compartmentalize and fragment scripture, where I didn't even try to look at how his word could be extrapolated. Too much tunnel vision.

Are you saying that Romans 13 advocates civil disobedience? No, I would say the first commandment would call for civil disobedience, any time, and everytime, the government defines anything contrary to God's revealed Word. We cannot serve two masters, you will either love the one and hate the other. We need to always repeat back what God has said. We are called to advance the Kingdom of God, if our government is in sync with God's ways, then that is icing on the cake.

I'm saying that Romans 13 does some defining, God describes the government as his ministers, 3 times, they should be submitted to God as his ministers, just like us. They are not free-lance agents. Jesus is described as ruling over the Nations and in Psalms, nations are told to kiss the Son.

Just earlier in Romans 11:36 For of Him and through Him and to Him are all things, to whom be glory forever. Amen. This is gonna include governments. ."..and to Him" As Ken Myers pointed out in " So Let Your Light." "When Jesus said give unto Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's, he did not mean that Caesar got to descide the split!" The governments are never just given carte blanche to decide for themselves what they should be concerned with. As I pointed out Sunday, because even we individual believers are not always used to submitting to God, if only because we cannot fathom what God wants done with all this neutral territory. So at this point in our history we just accept and expect that if you can get the votes, than it's okay.

It is telling, that Romans 13 only defines the government job as of opposing evil by both positive reward of those doing good, no need to fear government if your doing good, and reminding that if you do evil they are assigned to suppress it. Both the positive and negative are spoken of twice.

And as in the garden, the temptation for every government, like each individual man is, "who will decide? that which is good and that which is evil?" At any point any government fails to repeat back what God has said about any situation the Christians in the nation should not fall in line but be a witness about what God has said. You don't have to take to the streets with your guns to do this.

Note: Our government through the government school system has made it very clear what god they serve, and it is the god of humanism. Now the government doesn't have to take out ads in the local papers and say, "These are the truths we hold to be self-evident." It's much easier to just inculcate into the next generation what values they believe in, through the school system. It's worked great so far. Kevin Swanson says the "battle is over" concerniong homosexuality as within the student population, it will parrot back, that being gay is ok, no big deal. So this next generation has accepted the new paradigm without so much as a whimper.