Back in March I spoke at the Utrustad conference in Göteborg (in Swedish) and unfortunately that content has not been made public. But below is the text of how I approached the subject (with a few minor edits for length here).
“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.” – Romans 12:2.
There are few areas of public life that more clearly show just how untransformed Christian minds are than politics. And it would seem that more than ever, Christians are commenting on government. Not necessarily their own government, but that no longer matters.
We’re living in interesting times.
Consider the changes in just one area of Sweden’s place in the world. My family and I, following the call of God on our lives, moved to Sweden in 2011. Sweden was not part of NATO, it was famous for its neutrality and calls for peace. It had closed down national service because who needed it?
This year my son, who is now 17, returned his form for national service. Sweden is now a NATO member and “on January 10th, Dagens Nyheter, one of Sweden’s largest newspapers, proposed a “joint Nordic” nuclear programme, perhaps alongside Germany.”
The way the world works is being shaken.
Or, at least, it can seem that way.
And when it comes to discussing faith and politics, few passages show just how untransformed Christian theology can be as clearly as Romans 13. If you favour the government of the moment then Romans 13:1-7 defends your view. Your political opponents show the error of their judgement by complaining or worse resisting the policies and politics of government (which in this era have become your policies and politics).
However when the political tide turns against you, then Romans 13 is quietly forgotten or turned on its head because of course we must obey God not man and God is obviously not on their side. It is used like a sail, working for us no matter which way the political wind is blowing.
Yet followers of Christ are to have renewed minds (12:2) and are to ‘think with sober judgement’ (12:3) not just about ourselves but about all things. How then should Christians live with regard to the authorities that exist in the world? And will your teaching make sense to the Christian in Tehran or Kabul, or Zimbabwe, or China, or Russia as much as it does to the Christian in Sweden or America?
These questions can serve to help us think a little harder about what Paul is and isn’t teaching here.
“Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment.” – Romans 13:1-2
In keeping with Paul’s view on the importance of order in God’s world, there is submission to representative authority and here ‘every person’ is to submit themselves to the authorities that govern them.
Why? Because, Paul says, they have been instituted by God and to resist what God has appointed will incur judgment. It would seem simple enough.
Except our world is the way it is and only became the way it is because someone, somewhere at some point resisted a governing authority. The reasons why Sweden is neither Danish nor Catholic, why America (and much of the rest of the world) isn’t ruled any longer by the country of my birth and why black people are not segregated is that people resisted their governing authority.
Should they have? Were they disobeying God in doing so? There are those who think the answer is clearly yes to each option.
When the angels helped Peter escape from Herod’s jail were they resisting an authority that God had instituted?
Were the midwives who rescued children from the murderous plans of Pharaoh guilty of not submitting to an authority God had instituted?
These instances and more mean that Christians have mostly recognised limits to the submission God’s people should show. Paul’s ‘resisting what God has appointed’ finds some balance alongside say Daniel 3:28, where Scripture records the words of a pagan king who has been defied. Nebuchadnezzar said, “Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who has sent his angel and delivered his servants who trusted in him. They disobeyed the king’s command and yielded up their bodies rather than serve and worship any god except their own God.”
Peter told the chief priests in Jerusalem “We must obey God rather than any human authority” and the issue at stake there was religious freedom. Commentators agree then, that if there is a conflict between obeying God and obeying a human authority, God is to be obeyed.
Which is how Daniel ended up in the Lion’s den; Shadrach and his friends ended up in a furnace, and why John the Baptist lost his head. No authority, rightly or wrongly, likes being defied. Sometimes the cost of obeying God and defying Caesar will cost you your life.
And even though that is true it is worth remembering because governments have been instituted by God, they receive authority from Him. Therefore the highest authority is the Lord’s. Proverbs 8:15–16 (NRSV) declares, “By me kings reign, and rulers decree what is just; by me rulers rule, and nobles, all who govern rightly.”
And for those that don’t rule rightly, God can teach even pagan rulers a lesson, as with Nebuchadnezzar who lost his sanity, “until he learned that the Most High God has sovereignty over the kingdom of mortals, and sets over it whomever he will.”
So when Jesus calmly reminds Pilate of the real source of his authority, “You would have no power over me unless it had been given you from above” he speaks as Scripture has always spoken. God rules & reigns even over those who do evil and blaspheme His holy name.
Therefore in this life neither our allegiance nor our hope should be directed towards an earthly ruler but only ever a heavenly one. The cross and the resurrection do not make Christians indifferent to politics. They make them free. Free to submit without servility, to pay taxes without resentment, to pray for godless rulers without cynicism — because their deepest hope is not riding on the outcome of any election, any war, or any treaty. Why? Because we have seen what happens when God decides to act.
Then Paul writes something that would appear, at face value, to be plainly false: “For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Do you wish to have no fear of the authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive its approval.”
Even the poorest student of history can find a library full of examples of rulers who were a terror to anyone good or bad — nor should we forget that Paul himself was once a terror to Christians, or that his Saviour was an innocent man who was nevertheless crucified. But the cross is not just Rome’s verdict on Jesus. It is God’s verdict on every human power that has ever claimed ultimate authority. At Calvary the legal system of Rome and the religious system of Jerusalem both looked at the Son of God and said: guilty. And God’s answer came on the morning of the third day. The guards fled. The stone was rolled away. And the one Rome had condemned walked out.
Yet Paul’s comment about rulers not being a terror to good conduct is only a problem for those who read Scripture seeking proof texts. Paul is describing the normative function of government, not guaranteeing the moral character of every ruler.
Just as Hebrews 13 tells us to obey our church leaders and submit to them, Acts 20 tells us some of them will be wolves and then 1 Timothy 5 tells us what to do when there are charges to be brought against them.
In the same way Romans 13 tells us the general principle. God is a God of order and in His wisdom He has delegated the ordering of society to governing authorities who get their authority from Him, who serve Him and will ultimately be held to account by Him.
The governments of the world have been given two main tasks. First to restrain evil and administer justice (no bribes, no favouritism to the rich over the poor, honest measures in trade & commerce and so on). They bear the sword and they are to do so wisely. Because this is their task Paul urges the believers in Rome to ‘never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God’ (Rom 12:19) and then that there is ‘an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer’. The avenger is not to be an individual but an institution, who administers justice not for the cause of private honour but for justice in the community.
Secondly, they are to govern for your good — and because they devote themselves to this task, pay your taxes.
In Paul’s view then (and Peter’s), Christians are to be model citizens, praying for peaceful times, praying for the good of the city and praying for their leaders. They are not causing trouble, nor taking justice into their own hands, they are not idle, they work hard, they pay their taxes, they contribute to the good of their community by being willing to do good to all and to be rich in good deeds. They fear God and honour the emperor. If trouble is to come to them it will not be because they are bad citizens.
Yet here in Romans 13 Paul envisions the believer as not just being good citizens but outstanding examples of the virtuous life. They are clothed not just with the armour of light but with Jesus Christ. No drunkenness for them, no sexual immorality. Amen, amen we say.
No jealousy or quarrelling either. Friends, quarrelling is put in the same sentence as orgies. Don’t make the mistake of seeing it as less sinful. If you found out one of the members of your church was holding orgies, I hope you would have the good sense to initiate a church discipline process. If you see someone constantly maligning and quarrelling on social media, in church or wherever – do you have good Biblical reasons not to treat that in exactly the same way?
In Titus 3 Paul gives a short summary of what he writes here in Romans 13 saying, “Remind them to be subject to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good work, to speak evil of no one, to avoid quarrelling, to be gentle, and to show every courtesy to everyone.”
Humiliating our political opponents may feel satisfying. Scoring rhetorical points may feel powerful but the command to not speak evil, to be gentle and to show every courtesy, is still in force.
In Paul’s vision the Christian is more than a good citizen, more than a pillar of decency in a sensual world but also proactively a good neighbour. They will love their neighbour and do them no wrong.
And it is here that we find the Biblical wisdom to guide us in times of tyranny. Christians have largely been willing to refuse obedience if the authorities demand they do something that God forbids or if they forbid something that God commands. This explains why there have been underground churches in, say, China.
But this position has led the church into damning compromise when the state has persecuted not Christians but their Jewish neighbour. So when Paul tells us ‘not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think’, that applies historically too. As a test case, would your conclusions on Romans 13 have led you to side with those who, like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, resisted the Nazis or with the German Christian Movement that cooperated with them?
Yet I would argue that Scripture’s command to ‘love your neighbour as yourself’ means there are more cases to defy the State when, for example, persecution of a group has become a matter of domestic or for that matter foreign policy. This is what Corrie ten Boom, who knew personally both the power and the cost of loving your neighbour in evil times, said when she and her sister chose not to flee Holland for Switzerland but to stay and hide their neighbours: “This was evil’s hour: we could not run from it. Perhaps only when human effort had done its best and failed, would God’s power alone be free to work.”
Some go further, in medieval times John of Salisbury in his work Policraticus argued that when a ruler becomes a tyrant it might be necessary to pursue first the removal and then judgement of the ruler. Or in the last century Dietrich Bonhoeffer realised that the Nazi government was acting in such a way that the Christian would be guilty if they acted against them and guilty if they did not. He did not claim that Hitler was an illegitimate authority, but an evil one and accepted the guilt he would incur before men by resisting the evil in the hope that God would be merciful to him.
The cross teaches us that obedience to God may cost you everything at the hands of the state. The resurrection teaches us that the state does not, and will not, have the final word. This is why Bonhoeffer could face what he faced without either the rage of a revolutionary or the despair of a man who had lost and would die saying, “This is the end—for me, the beginning of life”. He did not need the state to vindicate him. He had already placed himself under a higher jurisdiction. And it is this — not a sharper political theology, not a better theory of resistance — that is the true gift of the gospel to Christians living under pressure. The state can take your freedom, your reputation, even your life. What it cannot do is undo Easter.
Yet I would say, having read about 20 commentaries on Romans 13, that too many of them, if you simply follow their conclusions sufficiently, would not have led you to act as Bonhoeffer did — or as the best of the Confessing Church did. And that worries me.
Because the question Romans 13 ultimately puts to us is not an abstract one. It is this: when the moment comes — and for some of your congregations, in some of the countries your networks touch, it may already have come — will your theology of the state be large enough? Large enough to submit when submission is right, to pay taxes without complaint, to pray for godless rulers with genuine faith. But also large enough, when the neighbour is being led away, to know that love does not have an opt-out clause.
Paul does not end Romans 13 with government. He ends it with a person — clothed not in the armour of a political cause, left or right, but in Jesus Christ himself. That is the answer to every political moment: not a sharper ideology, but a more Christlike person.
Friends, the task of the church is, and has always been, to glorify Christ — in how we live, how we work, and how we speak, even to unjust rulers, of love, truth and justice. If we are to avoid the danger of conformity to the world and to exhibit the transformation of the gospel of Jesus Christ then there is a challenge in Romans 13. The challenge is for the church to not be captive to the spirit of the age, neither to anger nor to selfish whim but to engage with the ones who live beside us and to pray for the ones who govern over us, that in every way Christ may be glorified.
Because God is light with no hint of darkness – we wear light’s armour.
Because God is just and has appointed servants of justice – we submit.
Because God is a God of order – we pay our taxes.
Because God is sovereign – we are not defined by the politics of the moment
Because Christ’s love compels us – we reject cowardice and cruelty
Because Christ is holy – we separate from darkness.
Because Christ is risen — the state does not have the final word.
Because Christ is coming – we walk in humility, wisdom, truth and love.
Sources:
- https://www.economist.com/europe/2026/02/02/can-europe-do-nuclear-deterrence-without-america
- https://www.abc.net.au/religion/dietrich-bonhoeffers-theology-of-resistance/10766546
- https://www.desiringgod.org/interviews/does-romans-13-prohibit-all-civil-disobedience
- https://americanheritage.org/the-debate-on-revolution-submission-to-authority/
* The image at the top of this post is Flossenberg Concentration Camp where Dietrich Bonhoeffer was imprisoned.
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