Authority and Submission

Today's Scripture

Romans 13:1 — "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."

Acts 5:29 — "But Peter and the apostles answered, 'We must obey God rather than men.'"

Both sentences sit in the same Bible. Both were written by men the government eventually executed. Today is about learning to hold them together.

The Big Idea

Government is God's idea, so Christians honor it — even when the people in charge are the people we voted against. But government is not God, so Christians must refuse it when it commands what God forbids. The hard skill is telling those two moments apart, because every heart is tempted to call its own politics "conscience."

Reflection

God invented government

Start with the verse that surprises modern people most. Romans 13:1-2 — "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." Paul does not call government a necessary evil. He says it is instituted — set up on purpose — by God himself.

He goes further. Romans 13:4 — the ruler "is God's servant for your good." The official collecting your taxes and the clerk renewing your license are, without knowing it, doing a job God created. And remember who wore the crown when Paul wrote this: Nero — the emperor whose government would later kill Christians, almost certainly including Paul himself. Paul was not describing a government he liked. He was describing what government is.

Peter — the same apostle who said "We must obey God rather than men" — wrote the same way. 1 Peter 2:13-17 — "Be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governors... Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor." Read those last four commands slowly. Everyone gets honor. The church gets love. The emperor gets honor too — but only God gets fear. That single word keeps the whole system in its place.

Why would God set up human authority at all? C.S. Lewis gave a famously humble answer:

"I am a democrat because I believe in the Fall of Man... Mankind is so fallen that no man can be trusted with unchecked power over his fellows." — C.S. Lewis, "Equality," in Present Concerns

Government exists because people sin. Laws, courts, and police are God's mercy, restraining the strong from devouring the weak. But the same logic cuts both ways: because rulers are sinners too, no government can be trusted with everything. That is why Lewis kept the state's job description deliberately modest:

"The State exists simply to promote and to protect the ordinary happiness of human beings in this life." — C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Think of a referee at a basketball game. You obey the whistle, not because the ref is the best player in the gym, but because without a whistle the game turns into a brawl. Honoring the referee is part of loving the game. Romans 13 says honoring government — paying taxes, obeying laws, speaking with respect — is part of loving your neighbors. And notice: that command does not pause during the years your side loses. "Honor the emperor" was written about a man no Christian voted for and no Christian admired.

That stings in an age when mocking politicians is a national sport. You can disagree loudly, vote hard, and campaign for change. What a Christian cannot do is sneer. The office is God's invention, even when the officeholder is a disappointment.

The most polite rebels in history

But the Bible tells a second set of stories, and it tells them with obvious approval.

Exodus 1:17 — "But the midwives feared God and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but let the male children live." Pharaoh, the most powerful man on earth, ordered newborn boys killed. Two midwives named Shiphrah and Puah quietly refused. Scripture says they "feared God" — there is Peter's key word again — and God blessed them for their defiance.

Centuries later, a Babylonian king built a golden statue and ordered everyone to bow. Three young exiles answered him to his face. Daniel 3:17-18 — "our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace... But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up." But if not. They did not know they would be rescued. They refused anyway.

Later still, when praying to anyone but the king was made illegal, Daniel 6:10 says Daniel "got down on his knees three times a day and prayed and gave thanks before his God, as he had done previously" — with his windows open toward Jerusalem. No hiding, no spectacle, no mob. Just obedience to God in plain view, with the lions' den waiting.

So when the apostles stood before the high court in Acts 5:27-29 and said, "We must obey God rather than men," they were not inventing something new. They were standing in a long line. And the line continued after them. Around the year 155, an elderly bishop named Polycarp was ordered to curse Christ or be burned alive. He answered:

"Eighty and six years have I served Him, and He never did me any injury: how then can I blaspheme my King and my Saviour?" — Polycarp, The Martyrdom of Polycarp

Now notice what all these rebels have in common. Each disobeyed a specific command that directly contradicted a command of God — not a policy they found annoying or a leader they found embarrassing. Each disobeyed openly, not secretly. None raised a sword or a mob. And every one of them accepted the cost: the furnace, the lions' den, the flogging, the fire. In the Bible, civil disobedience — refusing a government order for the sake of conscience — is never a loophole for getting your way. It is a cross you volunteer to carry.

The test both parties keep failing

Here we have to get honest, because Romans 13 has a dark history of misuse. American slaveholders quoted it to demand obedience from the people they enslaved. Church leaders in Nazi Germany quoted it to silence Christians who objected to Hitler. The pattern is depressingly reliable: whoever holds power develops a deep love for Romans 13, and whoever just lost an election develops a sudden passion for Acts 5. The left does it. The right does it. Watch for it in your own chest next election night.

John Calvin, writing five hundred years ago, drew the line exactly where Peter drew it:

"We are subject to the men who rule over us, but subject only in the Lord. If they command anything against Him, let us not pay the least regard to it." — John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion

Submission, yes — but "subject only in the Lord." A thousand years before Calvin, Augustine compressed the same truth into one sentence, which a Baptist preacher would later quote from a jail cell:

"An unjust law is no law at all." — Augustine, On Free Choice of the Will

That preacher was Martin Luther King Jr., arrested in Birmingham for marching without a permit. From his cell, he explained the logic with surgical care:

"One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws." — Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail

Do not miss King's first half. He was not anti-law; he affirmed a moral duty to obey just laws. Then he broke an unjust one openly and sat in jail for it. That is the midwife pattern, the Daniel pattern, the Acts 5 pattern — defiance that pays its own bill.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer faced the twentieth century's hardest version of the test. As the Nazi state demanded total allegiance and began murdering its neighbors, most of the German church kept politely quoting Romans 13. Bonhoeffer joined the resistance instead, and it cost him his life. Near the end, he drafted a confession on behalf of the whole church:

"The Church confesses that she has witnessed the lawless application of brutal force, the physical and spiritual suffering of countless innocent people, oppression, hatred, and murder, and that she has not raised her voice on behalf of the victims and has not found ways to hasten to their aid." — Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics

Read that slowly. The German church's great sin was not too much resistance. It was too much obedience — obedience to men that had quietly become disobedience to God.

So how do you tell which moment you are in? The biblical stories hand us hard questions. Is the government actually commanding what God forbids, or forbidding what God commands — specifically, in black and white? Or am I just furious that my side lost? Am I willing to disobey openly and accept the consequences, or do I want rebellion at a discount? Am I moved by love for victims, or by contempt for opponents? These questions will not make the call easy. They will make it honest.

The King who stood before a governor

One more scene, and it changes the temperature of everything.

Jesus stands on trial before Pontius Pilate, a mid-level Roman politician with the power to crucify. Pilate brags about that power. John 19:11 — "Jesus answered him, 'You would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given you from above.'" Even at his own rigged trial, Jesus affirms what Romans 13 teaches: Pilate's authority is real — and it is borrowed.

Then the Son of God submits to the worst verdict any government ever rendered. He does not summon the angels. He absorbs the injustice. And through that exact miscarriage of justice, God saves the world. The cross is where perfect submission and perfect defiance meet: Jesus obeyed God rather than men, it cost him everything, and it bought us everything.

This is why Christians can live inside the tension between Romans 13 and Acts 5 without panic. Our King has already stood where we stand — before a hostile government — and he now outranks every government that will ever exist. We are free to honor flawed rulers, because they cannot ultimately harm us. We are free to defy them when conscience requires, because they cannot ultimately save us either. People who know they are safe do not grovel, and they do not rage.

Which is exactly where Paul lands. 1 Timothy 2:1-2 — "I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way." Notice: prayers and thanksgivings, for all in high positions — not just the ones you helped elect. It is very hard to despise someone you are honestly praying for. Prayer is where obedience and resistance both learn their manners.

Going Deeper

Today, pray by name for three people who hold authority over you — and make sure at least one is a leader you did not vote for and never would. Ask God to give them wisdom, to protect the people under their care, and to do them good. Then notice what the praying does to you. Romans 13 and Acts 5 are both easier to obey from your knees.