Most Christians generally, including the majority of the Latter-day Saints, believe that the Bible teaches that God has organized all the governments of the Earth, placed into their hands the power to violently punish those who disobey the orders of the government, and commanded Christians to obey the laws of the governments in which they live. Here is a common example that even argues that obeying the orders of the government is a form of worship for God and another that claims that we cannot fully submit to God without submitting to the authority of the governments of the world. But this is a total distortion of what the Apostle Paul was teaching, warping his words and counsels about what kind of governments we are supposed to follow and what kinds we are supposed to reject into a false doctrine that teaches us subservience and obedience to the State is the will of God. In this article I set forth a more faithful and correct interpretation of the Apostle Paul’s teaching and apply it to the kinds of governments we face in the modern life to see what our relationship to them should be.
The Scriptures
Before we go farther I want to establish exactly what scriptures we will be looking at as we go forward. Not only will we be looking at Romans 13:1-7, the verses typically associated with the problematic interpretations from above. To fully understand Paul’s teachings here we must remember that our divisions into chapters and verses is wholly post-biblical, a framework imposed on the text long after its writing which can cause as much misunderstanding as it does understanding. In this case it gives the impression that there is an intellectual break between the ending of Romans 12 and the start of Romans 13. This is not the case. They were originally written to be read together and understood together. Separating them removes their context and leads to misunderstanding and error. Therefore, I will include them together here below in order to try and reestablish that original context and therefore try and regain the original meaning.
Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight. Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay,” says the Lord. To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
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 12:14-21 through Romans 13: 1-7
Notice first that this is all one continual set of advice about how Christians should live.
Romans 12:14-21 is one of the most powerful examples of Christians being commanded to renounce violence in all of scriptures. Christians are to bless those who hate, beat, imprison, kill, mistreat, curse, or spit upon – i.e. those who persecute – them. We live at peace with all people, refusing to engage in an evil act, e.g. killing those trying to kill us, and trusting in the Lord’s time and justice to bring punishment to our offenders. Romans 12 concludes by actually commanding us to actively serve and do good to those who hate us because in doing this we overcome evil with good while doing in return to them what they have done to us or what we feel like their just punishment should be is being overcome by evil.
Romans 13: 1-7 continues on unbroken in the same exact theme. Christians should be subject to the governing authorities which come from God. This is because only those doing evil have anything to fear from these God appointed authorities. Christians should pay those who they owe and give respect to those whom respect is rightfully due. But herein lies the issue. Who are the governing authorities? Is Paul saying that the murderous Roman Empire that held 5 million people in absolute slavery where they were legally raped, tortured, robbed, and murdered(pg. 60), was ruled over by a megalomaniacal dictator who declared himself a god, and which dominated millions of people through brutal military oppression was instituted by God to carry out His justice on the wrongdoer? It seems like if there was a wrongdoer which God’s justice would destroy it would be the Roman Empire. And wouldn’t telling Christians to live in obedience to such a violent, warmongering, oppressive state be the exact opposite of living at peace with all people and never doing any evil to anyone else? So what are we to make of all this as Paul seems to tell Christians to do exactly contradictory things in the spaces of a single paragraph? It seems clear that the problem here is not Paul, but our interpretations of the Apostle that are the problem.
Interpreting Paul
Before going on to any alternate interpretations of these verses, I wish to point out that even if we accept the common interpretation – that it refers to mortal governments and their power to enforce law and order – that this does not mean that a Christian is bound to obey the State. As Anglican theologian and minister Dr. John Stott taught about this subject:
How then, can it be shown that Paul’s demand for submission is not absolute? Granted that the authority of the rulers is derived from God, what happens if they abuse it, if they reverse their God-given duty, commending those who do evil and punishing those who do good? Does the requirement to submit still stand in such a morally perverse situation? No. The principle is clear. We are to submit right up to the point where obedience to the state would entail disobedience to God. But if the state commands what God forbids, or forbids what God commands, then our plain Christian duty is to resist, not to submit, to disobey the state in order to obey God. As Peter and the other apostles put it to the Sanhedrin: ‘We must obey God rather than men!’ (Acts 5:29). This is the strict meaning of civil disobedience, namely disobeying a particular human law because it is contrary to God’s law. …Whenever laws are enacted which contradict God’s law, civil disobedience becomes a Christian duty.
…Further light is thrown on the ambivalent nature of the state’s authority when Romans 13 is compared with Revelation 13. Some thirty years have elapsed since Romans was written, and the systematic persecution of Christians has begun under the Emperor Domitian. Now the state is no longer seen as the servant of God, wielding his authority, but as the ally of the devil (pictured as a red dragon), who has given his authority to the persecuting state (pictured as a monster emerging out of the sea). Thus Revelation 13 is a satanic parody of Romans 13. Yet both are true. ‘According as the State remains within its limits or transgresses them, the Christian will describe it as the Servant of God or as the instrument of the Devil’.
Biblical Commentary by Dr. John Stott
Here Dr. Stott makes the argument that Paul is not issuing some blanket command to Christians to obey their governments. The Apostle Paul taught that the Christian duty to obey the government only extended to the laws that it ordered and enforced which aligned with the commandments of God. When governments commanded that which was wrong then Christians not only had the moral duty to refuse to comply they must actively resist such wickedness. His example in this are the Apostles themselves who disobeyed the Jewish state because obedience to its orders would have violated Christ’s commandments to spread the Gospel to all the Earth. He might have added Paul himself who was beheaded for preaching Christ in defiance of the Roman Emperor Nero. Dr. Stott then makes a powerful point which I have made here before – corrupt governments are the tool of Satan in dominating the world in defiance of the will of God.
In a similar line of argument, New Testament scholar Dr. Oscar Cullman argued that in Romans 13, Paul is not saying that God established the governments of the world, but that angelic beings, both good and evil, are behind the powers of the world and whether a government was acting as the servant of God or the demonic servant of Satan can only be determined by how it accords or disobeys the commandments of Christ. (See The State in the New Testament, pgs. 65-70) Thus, according to the traditional interpretation, it is only when governments rule in accordance to the commandments of God that Christians are duty bound to obey them because it is only then that their authority could be said to come from God. When governments act in violations of the commandments of God they are the servants of Satan and no Christian can be bound to serve Satan, we serve God alone. This accords exactly with the teachings and examples of Latter-day Saint leaders throughout the history of the church.
Dr. John Stott 
Dr. Oscar Cullman
These truths alone overthrow the argument that Romans 13 teaches that we should be obedient to the governments because governmental authority comes from God. Almost every government on the Earth today, certainly ever major and minor nation, has the State as its form of government. The term government itself is a generic term that refers to consensual organizations organized by its members to achieve some end with rules all agree upon to govern their conduct and the function of the government itself. The State is very different. It is a geographic monopoly on power established and maintained by force and rules over people who do not want to be part of it whether they want it or not. Those who violate its edicts, “laws,” are met with the threat of violence to terrify them into compliance or simply with overwhelming force to compel them to obedience. One of its main purposes is to extract wealth from the public which is then used to benefit those who hold political power and the social elites who are connected to those in power. When you refuse to give it your wealth you are once again met with overwhelming force and threatened with kidnapping, imprisonment, (i.e. arrest and jailing) and/or even death. This extortion and theft it calls taxation.
Can a government which rules through direct violence and force, funded by extortion and theft, which compels people to go and murder and die in its name and for the furtherance of its power (whether that be through a military draft, a voluntary army, or state paid policing seems irrelevant when the outcomes is the same) claim to be acting according to the commandments of God and by its limits? Of course not! Such an organization which rules by violence and exists by perpetuating injustice can never claim to be in accordance to the will of God and therefore cannot claim to have its authority from God who has absolutely forbidden violence, killing, terror, and theft. It is clear that any “authority” for such a government comes from the dragon Satan as it reigns with blood and horror upon the Earth. Therefore it cannot be claimed that any Christian is bound to obey any statist (“state-ist”) government, whether that be Imperial Rome or the modern United States. It is clear that the Apostle Paul understood that the Roman state was corrupt, unjust, and in violation of God’s commandments as he taught Christians to never sue one another in the Roman legal system. (See 1 Corinthians 6:2)
Unjust governments have no authority from God and therefore no Christian was bound to obey them. Even the Christian warmonger and statist Augustine of Hippo realized this as he taught:
You will not prove that humans are happy who live steadily in the midst of the disasters of war. Whether the blood shed is that of their fellow citizens or of their enemies matters not, for in any case it is human blood. The dark shadow of fear and the lust for blood has fallen over them. If they know joy, then it is but the gleaming of fragile glass which they must fear will be shattered at any second. How then can it be wise or even rational to see grounds to be boastful in the building of empires?
…If it does not do justice, what is the government but a great criminal enterprise? For what are gangs of criminals but petty little governments? The pack is a group which follows the orders of its leader according to a social compact of sorts, sharing the spoils along the rules upon which they agree. Through a process of gradual accretion, the gang may acquire bodies and territory, establish itself in some place, and soon be possessed of all the attributes of statehood—then it may be known as a state, acquiring this title not by being any less avaricious but rather by having achieved impunity. Alexander the Great’s conversation with a pirate he had captured reflects this well. The king asked what possessed him to infest the sea as he did, and the pirate replied: “No differently from you when you pursue your crimes in the world. I act with a small ship, so I am called a pirate. You command a fleet and are called emperor.”
The City of God Vol. II, pgs. 139 and 140 in this alternate translation.
Here Augustine saw so clearly what so many today ignore so desperately – the majority of the governments of the world are nothing less than great criminal empires ruled by a group of gangsters who profit off the wealth of everyone else through their monopoly on mass violence. The only difference is that today we have a greater understanding of human rights and justice than Augustine did in his day, which in turn means we have a greater understanding of justice, too. This is why the only governments Christians are not bound by faith to obey the various forms of statist governments which rule over them. Christians were and are bound to obey (assuming Paul is referring to earthly governments at all) only those governments which abstain from violating God’s commandments and which do not rule through violence and force as those are unjust – in other words governments which are voluntaryist in nature. In a voluntaryist government all laws, government initiatives, and funding only take place with the express consent of all those involved and any unjust laws or actions, those which violate the life, liberty, or natural rights of anyone, have no power or authority at all. Under the traditional interpretation of Romans 13 this is the only kind of government that fits the teachings of the Apostle Paul and which therefore would bind a Christian to supporting or obeying them.
Re-Interpreting Paul
The issues surrounding what Paul means seem to be over what the terms “governing authorities,” “sword,” “avenger,” and “taxes,” mean and what he intended his usage of these terms to mean. Here I will offer some alternate interpretations based on the ancient Greek words and their usage in the New testament. In doing so I will ultimately conclude that the Apostle Paul isn’t talking about the duty of the Christian to obey the governments of the world at all, rather he is talking about the duty of the Christian to obey the Church.
First, the term “governing bodies.” The terms that Paul uses here are exousiais hyperechousais, which can literally be translated as “those who have authority above him.” This is often assumed to mean government authority, but if so then it is only ever in Romans 13 that it is used this way. In all of its other uses in the scriptures the word exousiais refers to the moral and spiritual authority of the person said to have it and not to political power. In Matthew 28:18 Christ uses the word exousiais when He declares, “All authority [exousiais] in heaven and on earth has been given to me,” and in Mark 6:7 exousiais is even used to denote the priesthood authority given to the Apostles to cast out evil and wicked spirits. Indeed, it would be extremely strange for Paul to use this term at all to mean those with political or government authority because Greek had a different word that directly referred to those who held power in government – archontes. If Paul meant to tell Christians to be obedient to the government authorities who ruled over them wouldn’t he have used archontes in its appropriate conjugation instead of this term that instead refers repeatedly in the text to moral and spiritual authority? Wouldn’t it be more obvious for him to use the word which meant state power and state officials if he indeed meant to say state power and state officials? But he doesn’t. Instead he combines exousiais with hyperechousais (which means “above” or “superior to”) to give us a sentence that may better be read as, “Let every person be subject to the moral and spiritual authorities superior to him.” (Romans 13:1) Nothing about this phrase seems to really refer to the powers of the state at all. Even the concept of authority is different from those who rule through power and no earthly power has any authority as all authority belongs to Christ.
It does sound like what you would expect Paul to say if he were telling members of the church to be subject to the church leaders in authority above them though as their authority is entirely based on their spiritual and and moral power. This also makes sense in the succeeding verses as Paul explains that refusing to follow these authorities are refusing to follow those whom God has appointed to rule. It also makes sense of Paul’s claim that those in authority are God’s servants. Those called by revelation and appointed to their position by those in proper authority in the church are the servants of God chosen to exercise priesthood authority based on their spiritual power, their faith, and their moral power, whether they keep the commandments of God or not. When acting in their proper role they are God’s servants to carry forth the work of the Church and we should strive to sustain them in their labors by doing as they ask of us.
Next, the term “sword.” Here Paul uses the term machairan which is either a short sword or a large knife, depending on the context of its use. It seems everyone agrees that as much as this could be a literal sword that it is meant to be interpreted symbolically. Those who argue that Romans 13:1-7 means we should obey the government argue the reference to a sword here is meant to represent the coercive power of the government to threaten and kill those who disobey it, i.e. to enforce its laws through violence. And it is absolutely true that a sword can symbolically mean that. It is also absolutely true that it doesn’t always mean that and can mean many other things. The Bible repeatedly uses the sword as a symbol for the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the words of God to pierce the heart and soul of the hearer. (See Hebrews 4:12 and Revelation 2:16) In fact, the only other time in the entire corpus of Paul’s surviving works that the word machairan even appears comes from Ephesians 6:13-18 in Paul’s Armor of God analogy:
Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and, as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one; and take the helmet of salvation, and the sword [machairan] of the Spirit, which is the word of God, praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication.
Emphasis my own.
Given that the reference to authorities in Romans 13:1 refers to moral and spiritual authorities and not state rulers there is no reason that the sword here must be literal. The sword that the moral and spiritual authorities of Romans 13:1 wield in order to ensure justice and correct evil is the Word of God, which directs their policies, rules, actions, and punishments. This is why they are an “avenger.” The Greek word translated here as avenger is ekdikos, which means “exacting penalty from one.” Needless to say, you can “exact penalty” from someone in a multitude of ways that do not require violence, force, or government action. Thus, instead of a state agent using violence to enforce the edicts of the government what Paul is talking about is the role that Church authorities have in using the Word of God in order to enforce church discipline upon those who grossly violate the commandments of God. My Latter-day Saint readers will recognize that modern church leaders fulfill this same role today. This interpretation is the only one that makes sense in light of 1 Corinthians 6:1-7 where Paul forbids the Saints from using the legal systems of the world to obtain justice and instead trust in the judgment of the church leaders to settle disputes. It would make no sense for Paul to endorse the world’s legal systems here as being of God only to later completely dismiss them as being unholy and beneath the Saints later on.
Finally, let us review what Paul means when he says we should pay our taxes. There are actually two Greek words translated as tax in verses 6 and 7 – phorous and phoron, respectively. Phorous means “to bear” or “to carry” something. Which makes no sense in terms of taxes. One concordance seems to suggest that phorous here is a conjugation of phero which means tribute. There is good reason to think that this line out of context would mean governments. After all, tribute or taxes are paid to the government. But even under that assumption we must be wary because no where here or elsewhere does the scripture suggest you are obligated to pay taxes. Rather, as Paul explains in verse 7, you pay the tax only if you do something to incur the debt, i.e. if you travel on a toll road then you should pay the toll instead of trying to sneak on and off it without the owners catching you. Thus, even the traditional interpretation of this as government taxation seems to fall flat a sin context Paul seems to be talking about consensual relationships and not compulsory ones – i.e. governments seizing money from the public by force is not something Christians are obligated to support or take part in. But there would seem to be another possibility as well. If Paul is not talking about state political officials but the spiritual and moral authorities which lead and direct the church, perhaps he is speaking here not of our supposed financial obligations to the government but our actual financial obligation to God. He is talking about what we now call tithes and offerings, which we are obligated to pay and if which we do not then we are robbing God. (See Malachi 3:8-12) They are our tribute to the Lord which we pay for the upkeep of His church and so that its work may be accomplished on the Earth.
Given everything above then, Romans 13:1-7 can rightfully be understood in a way that doesn’t refer to the State at all and could read something like this:
Let every person be subject to the moral and spiritual authorities superior to him. 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 the power of the Word of God in vain. For he is the servant of God, one who judges and 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 the tribute you owe the spiritual and moral authorities, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing. Pay to all what is owed to the moral and spiritual authorities above you: tribute to whom tribute is owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed.
Conclusions
In the end, no matter how you interpret Romans 13, it doesn’t mean what the statists want it to mean. Even in the traditional interpretation the Apostle Paul’s teachings would have us renouncing and denouncing the State and any for of government based upon violence, compulsion, coercion, extortion, or theft as all of these violate the commandments of God. Further, such governments, whose existence is based upon violating God’s commandments, are demonic in nature and draw any supposed “authority” they have from the Dragon Satan. No Christian is ever under any social, moral, or religious obligation to obey them. Only voluntaryist societies where governments exert no compulsory power and which are structured solely on the consent of each individual member and whose rules do not violate the liberties of men and/or commandments of God meet Paul’s requirements for the kind of government that Christians would be obligated to obey, if you accept the traditional interpretation. But there is reason to believe that this traditional interpretation is imperfect and may be leading to errors in understanding.
After reevaluating Romans 13:1-7 and the interpretation of the words which seem to suggest it is telling Christians to obey worldly governments, we find good evidence that this is simply not true. These verses can be equally understood to be teaching members of the church to obey the leaders of the church who have their power from God and who act as His judges upon the Earth, being sure to pay what we owe the church both financially as well as in respect and honor. This fits very well with the preceding verses in what is now Romans 12 as they described the Christian one as eschewing all evil and violence, instead doing good to those who do evil to Christians. For Paul to suddenly flip around and then say that Christians should use uphold the violence of the government (the sword) seems contradictory in the extreme. Understanding Paul to being talking about our obligations to support the church both emotionally and financially makes far more sense once you realize that he repeatedly calls these authorities the servants and ministers of God. Caesar Augustus may have bene used as God’s tool but he was never God’s servant and He certainly never ministered in the work of the Gospel. The same is true today of modern governments and all the their leaders.
No matter what angle you come at it from, Romans 13 does not endorse the State. Neither does Romans 13 teach that all governments come from God nor does it teach that Christians must submit to and obey the governments under which they live. These ideas are distortions of the Apostle Paul’s teaching read into the scripture by those seeking to justify their own unjust, immoral, and sinful governments.