What Government Should Mean to You
The working title of this sermon is “Christians and Government.” It seems to me there’s a lot of confusion about how the church is supposed to think about the state. Anytime it gets brought up, people start chanting “separation of church and state! Separation of church and state!” like that’s the golden rule. “Don’t talk about politics in church!” as if the separation of church and state is supposed to protect the state, when the actual purpose is just the opposite—to keep the state from controlling or even influencing the church.
COVID 19 Update This current situation of the government telling people to stay home, keeping many from earning a living, forbidding churches from assembling, forbidding any kind of assembly—except maybe shopping—it’s coming to a boil. Violent crime, especially domestic, is at an all time high. Some people are ready to explode, some people are scared out of their wits.
I could complain about COVID19 quarantine things all day, which is why I thought we might want to take a minute to see what the Bible says about how Christians should respond to government and the laws of the land.
God’s Word actually has a lot to say on the subject, I’m not going to be able to do more than a general summary this morning. The first big point I want to make is an important one, though: God speaks to us very clearly about how we’re supposed to understand our response to the government—the problem isn’t going to be that we don’t comprehend what He says, we just won’t want to do it.
Here’s the main text, Romans 13:1-7.
“Everyone must submit to governing authorities. For all authority comes from God, and those in positions of authority have been placed there by God. So anyone who rebels against authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and they will be punished. For the authorities do not strike fear in people who are doing right, but in those who are doing wrong. Would you like to live without fear of the authorities? Do what is right, and they will honor you. The authorities are God’s servants, sent for your good. But if you are doing wrong, of course you should be afraid, for they have the power to punish you. They are God’s servants, sent for the very purpose of punishing those who do what is wrong. So you must submit to them, not only to avoid punishment, but also to keep a clear conscience. Pay your taxes, too, for these same reasons. For government workers need to be paid. They are serving God in what they do. Give to everyone what you owe them: Pay your taxes and government fees to those who collect them, and give respect and honor to those who are in authority.”
I told you. It’s pretty clear. We just don’t like it, right?
The Bible has three foundational realms of government that each one of us is to live in submission to. They’ve been directly established by God—they are not man-made institutions. They each have their assigned responsibilities and areas that they are, in a perfect world, limited to rule over. They’re, from smallest to largest, the family, the church, and the civil government. Each of them have been put in place by God to perform certain functions in society—all societies, of every nation, across time and throughout all history.
The civil government is supposed to be in the ministry of justice and protection, the church is supposed to be all about the ministry of preaching God’s Word and administering His sacraments for the salvation and forgiveness of the whole world, and the family is supposed to be about the ministry of health, education and welfare.
So, the state has been given the sword and the right to carry out justice, the church has been given the Great Commission and the right to administer grace, and the family has been given the charge to nourish and take care of each other teaching in all wisdom and understanding.
The problem is that they don’t stay in their own lane very well. In certain times and in various places, every one of them has overstepped their bounds and gotten too big for their britches. In Luther’s day the church was running the show, in times of chieftains and clans the family assumed too much control, and in modern America—oh boy, is there any area that the bureaucrats haven’t tried to make a power grab for, or slowly get under their thumb through gradual encroachments?
They’re always going to overlap, that’s supposed to be the beauty of it. But in a fallen world where selfish sinners are the ones in charge, it’s never going to be a perfect situation until the day when our Lord and King comes again in power and glory, and puts everything under His dominion once and for all. That day is coming, but until it does, we have to deal with what we have.
And what we have is Romans 13.
So, these should be some good clarifying ideas as we walk into this little thought experiment about Christianity and government.
Who are we really honoring when we honor our father and mother?
Who’s grace does the church hand out?
Who’s justice does the state deliver?
God. The answer to all those is “God.”
In chapter 12, Paul is saying in very strong language that Christians are not to repay evil with evil—he says God’s going to take care of that—including the famous verse “vengeance is mine, thus saith the Lord.” Ultimately, God will take care of all the evil of the whole world on judgement day. Until then He has certain people in place, in every country, every city—to take care of justice on His behalf.
God works through earthly authorities and rulers. The civil government wields the sword for Him, for us. Have you ever thought of it that way? The state has been given a job to do that is explicitly forbidden to the Christian.
Jesus said we should turn the other cheek. To pray for our enemies, love our enemies. Sometimes people confuse this with the role of government. Jesus never told the Roman soldiers or government to turn the other cheek. He told Pilate that the only authority Pilate had was the authority that was given to him by God—just before he had Him killed.
For nations to do their job, they have to wield the sword that God has given them to punish the bad guys. Not rehabilitate them. Punishment and justice. This includes the death penalty if it is warranted. As a citizen you may have the right to carry a weapon, but if you get pulled over and go for that weapon the civil authority has the God given responsibility to shoot you in the face.
So don’t be confused about this: each Christian is to show mercy, the family is to restore and rehabilitate, the church is forgive and show grace—but the civil government is to punish and protect people from evil so that society can be peaceful and not in a state of anarchy.
Paul is primarily concerned that the church is free to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ. That they’re free to worship God and love people. This is why he’s telling them to make sure they don’t rock the boat and cause any unrest that would put the mission of Jesus at risk. Let Rome worry about Rome, pay your taxes and get back to doing the work of God.
After all that, if you’re still with me, let’s look at this text. A text that for most of the history of the church has been a history of attempts to avoid what seems to be its plain meaning. There’s probably not a passage in the Bible that has caused more unhappiness and misery in the church than these seven verses. Here we go:
“Everyone must submit to governing authorities.”
Who’s supposed to submit to governing authorities? Everyone.
For all authority comes from God, and those in positions of authority have been placed there by God.
And who are these authorities? Is it the politicians? Presidents, members of congress, governors, mayors? Yes those but also judges, police officers—teachers, principals, hall monitors.
Their authority comes from God. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re good people. It doesn’t mean they’re good leaders. It also doesn’t mean they know they were put there by God or that they’re even believers. I hear people get bent out of shape about this all the time. Some Christian who has read their Bible says a particular president was put there by God. All of a sudden they’re accused of worshiping some political leader. To say that a president was put in their position of power by God is just saying what the Word of God tells us. Doesn’t mean they’re good or bad or wise or foolish—God puts different people in power for His own reasons. We always get the leader we deserve. Vengeance is mine thus saith the Lord.
So anyone who rebels against authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and they will be punished.
Do I need to read that again? Look, we all understand this when we watch some idiot resist arrest or refuse to stand down and then they end up getting the sharp end of the stick. Paul says don't rebel against authority, and if you do, then be prepared to suffer the consequences.
There came a point when it was against Roman law to preach the Gospel, but Paul and Peter and all the Christians did it anyway. Then they happily went to prison and even suffered death when they got caught. So unless the Gospel is at stake—unless the government is ordering you to sin in violation of God’s commandments, unless the government is doing evil and has to be stopped—Christians are not supposed to rebel.
For the authorities do not strike fear in people who are doing right, but in those who are doing wrong. Would you like to live without fear of the authorities? Do what is right, and they will honor you.
Even if we think the laws are stupid.
I heard a guy tell a story one time about a preacher who got pulled over by a cop for speeding. The preacher said, “I’m sorry officer but I’m a man of God and I’m late for church.” The cop says, “Reverend, if you can’t obey the laws of man, how are you going to be able to obey the laws of God?”
The story was supposed to make us more mindful about obeying the laws of the land, but it didn’t work for me. Because I thought, yeah but God’s laws make sense. People make up all kinds of stupid rules.
Well, Paul says, “that might be so—obey them anyway. As unto the Lord.”
The authorities are God’s servants, sent for your good. But if you are doing wrong, of course you should be afraid, for they have the power to punish you. They are God’s servants, sent for the very purpose of punishing those who do what is wrong.
Ah, but what if it’s an evil government. Hitler, Stalin, Mao? What if they’ve turned the very idea of right and wrong upside down? Then what?
You think Paul didn’t have a front row seat to that kind of thing? Just a few years after he wrote this, Emperor Nero burned down a section of Rome and blamed it on the Christians—just so he could do a building project. He started executing Christians, burning them alive in the streets and killing them for sport in the Colosseum. Eventually Paul was going to have his head cut off by these authorities. There are definitely going to be times when the church is going to have to resist the government—once it became illegal to be a Christian, it wouldn’t have been the right thing to do to turn in your friends and family to the gestapo or turn yourself in—the right thing was to preach the Gospel as long as you could get away with it, then suffer consequences.
In Hitler’s Germany, it was right for the Christians to resist the Nazis and help save Jews and other people who were in danger. A Lutheran Pastor named Dietrich Bonhoeffer was actually part of a failed plot to assassinate Hitler—was it right for him to do that? I think so. He was caught and executed for it though. Which was also perfectly within the rights of the state to do.
Paul describes governments as agents of good, which are to promote civil good and punish bad guys—when a government isn’t the kind of government that does those things, then it’s not the kind of government that he’s talking about. The church needs to be wise and actually know the Word of God if we’re going to be able to know the difference between a government that must be obeyed and a government that must not be obeyed.
The thing Paul is stressing in this section is that Christians are to submit to the authorities God has placed over us as much as they can without sinning, in order to continue the ministry of telling people about the hope and forgiveness that’s only found in Jesus. That’s the goal.
So you must submit to them, not only to avoid punishment, but also to keep a clear conscience.
In other words, submit to them as unto the Lord.
Then he ends this section with what must have been the most pressing issue at the time of writing the letter.
Pay your taxes, too, for these same reasons. For government workers need to be paid. They are serving God in what they do. Give to everyone what you owe them: Pay your taxes and government fees to those who collect them, and give respect and honor to those who are in authority.”
Jesus had said the same thing. Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s.
The government that’s over you was put there by God.
And those authorities are directly responsible to God for how they use it. This has always been true but especially since Jesus has risen from the dead and was given all authority in heaven and on earth. Anyone who stands against Jesus and His righteous commands will stand in His judgement. Maybe in the here and now but definitely in the final judgement, but it will happen nonetheless.
So how does all this apply to our current situation?
You might think it would be easier for us Americans, who choose our leaders, to honor and submit to them—but that’s certainly not the case. Partially because we think of them as equals who don’t deserve any special honor, and partially because in a party system, there ends up being a lot of people in power that we didn’t vote for. God says we have to fear, honor and obey them anyway—because He put them there. Not us.
Another thing about being an American Christian and submitting to the government is the whole “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union” thing. For American Christians, the ultimate secular authority over us is—according to the constitution—us. A ‘government of the people, by the people, for the people.’
So, a strict reading of Romans 13 for American Christians is to submit to the constitution of the United States. And any so called authority who goes against it should be ignored and removed from office. That’s very different from the government that Paul was dealing with in Rome.
On the other hand, if a church is happily exercising their constitutional right to freedom of worship and freedom of assembly on a Sunday morning and a police officer suddenly comes into the room and tells everyone to get out—because there’s a shooter or a bomb or the building is on fire. That’s not the time to argue about the Bill of rights. It’s time for us to peacefully comply, get out of there and we thank him for his service.
Even if it turns out there’s no fire, no bomb, and the shooter turns out to be a cub scout with a water gun. We go along with it. At least for a while—then we go the second mile.
That’s pretty much where we are. Our freedom of assembly has been temporarily suspended because of this pandemic. We are peacefully complying. We don’t know everything that God’s up to in all this—it’s all for His secret purposes. Is He getting our attention because we’ve been distracted by everything else in the world and not made worshiping Him and loving people our top priority above everything else? Probably. Is He judging the nations and doing His hidden work to accomplish His secret purposes? Most likely, that's why we call Him God. Is He refining the church and taking our focus off our buildings and our plans and forcing us to be externally focused—calling us to Himself, proclaiming His forgiveness and mercy and love to all people. Absolutely. I’ll bet more people heard about the cross and the resurrection on Sunday than any other single day in the history of the world. The hidden things belong to the Lord.
Our ultimate authority, as Americans, is the constitution but as Christians it is much higher than that. As Christians we are in submission to the Word of God, we are in submission to Jesus Christ. And He tells us to honor the leaders of the country that God has put over us and do what they tell us.
But we do this with our eyes open and our Bibles open.
It was the Gospel that created a world where a "government of the people, by the people, for the people" is even possible. That’s a quote is from Lincoln’s Gettysburg address, but he was quoting someone else. In 1384, John Wycliffe wrote this in the prologue to his English translation of the Bible, he said, "The Bible is for the Government of the People, by the People, and for the People."
We will only be free as long as we submit to the Word of God. Anything else that disguises itself as freedom is really a trap, a cage. This is what Jesus taught with his words and with His life. This is what He proved by His resurrection.
Almighty God doesn’t see us as His subjects. People to rule and Lord over. He doesn’t view us the way most human governments have seen the people they rule. On the night when He was betrayed, Jesus stopped calling His followers “disciples” and started calling them “friends.” After the resurrection, He started calling them “brothers.”
Jesus is the king who willingly dies for His people. For us. For you.
This is a photo of the cross from Good Friday with our NewChurch names on it. Your name. This is the Gospel, that Jesus gave His life for all people, that all people are worth that much to Him.
It’s this beautiful truth that creates a world where freedom and human dignity are possible. Any attempt to govern a nation that doesn’t have this Gospel truth at its core will eventually fail and be torn down by the hand of God.
Until that happens, the job of the church is to go along peacefully with the ruling authorities as much as possible, taking every opportunity to spread the Gospel until its light completely changes the world.