Does Romans 13 Prohibit All Civil Disobedience?
00:00:00.000 | Pastor John, do the rather strong words in Romans 13, verses 1 through 7, indicate
00:00:10.260 | that civil disobedience is always wrong for the Christian? I don't think Romans
00:00:15.760 | 13, the first paragraph there, rules out all civil disobedience. Let me read just a
00:00:22.240 | piece of it, because it sounds like it does, and I admit it's a significant
00:00:25.840 | exegetical problem. So it says, "Let every person be subject to the governing
00:00:31.000 | authorities, for there is no authority except from God." So, be subject because
00:00:37.040 | authorities are from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.
00:00:42.200 | Therefore, whoever resists the authorities resists what God has
00:00:45.200 | appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. So there's the
00:00:52.200 | basic statement. We ought to be submissive to government because
00:00:57.680 | government is of God, and it's a gift of God. Sometimes people who get their back
00:01:02.440 | up real quick and want to plead for civil disobedience before they think too
00:01:06.960 | much forget that anarchy and mob rule are horrible, horrible things. I remember
00:01:15.040 | watching the movie "Gandhi" and those couple of scenes where the mobs got out
00:01:22.080 | of hand and turned on a man, and the terror that came over me just watching
00:01:27.960 | the power of a totally lawless mob. You are utterly helpless. And so government,
00:01:36.480 | in keeping a cap on the evil of the world and restraining evil and bringing
00:01:42.160 | some kind of order, is a great gift in a world of fallenness. So I just want to
00:01:47.320 | say yes to God's gift of government in a world of sin. But we all know, World War
00:01:54.760 | Two, Nazism, Pol Pot, all kinds of illustrations from history, that
00:02:00.240 | government can go wrong, which makes verse 3 and 4 look really strange. And I
00:02:06.040 | think this is a clue to what Paul is up to. "Rulers are not a terror to good but
00:02:12.760 | to bad." And we read that and we say, "Paul! How can you possibly say that? You're being
00:02:19.120 | thrown in jail every other week, and Jesus was crucified by governments. What
00:02:26.080 | do you mean they're not a terror to good conduct but to bad?" And then he
00:02:30.320 | goes on and says, "You'll receive their approval if you do what is good." In verse
00:02:35.600 | 4, they are God's servant for good, and they are an avenger to carry out God's
00:02:41.160 | wrath on the wrongdoer. And that's the argument for why we should be submissive.
00:02:46.480 | And we say, "Well, if the argument is so weak, how does the conclusion follow?" I
00:02:52.520 | think Paul, if he heard us say that, he would say, "Listen, here's what I'm doing.
00:02:58.480 | Number one, Caesar is going to read this, and I want to make sure that the ruling
00:03:06.200 | authorities in Rome know that Christians are not anarchists. We are basically
00:03:11.760 | law-abiding citizens, and we believe that he has his position by God. That's the
00:03:18.560 | first thing. And the second thing, I think he wants Christians to say, "Don't get
00:03:23.320 | your back up so easily, because being wronged by a government sends nobody to
00:03:28.560 | hell, but being rebellious and angry and bitter and spiteful does send people to
00:03:35.760 | hell, and so it's a much greater evil for you to be rebellious than for the
00:03:40.880 | government to mistreat you. A much greater evil for you, that is." Now, if you step
00:03:47.400 | back from Romans 13 and say, "Are there any appropriate acts of civil
00:03:56.980 | disobedience?" There are. I mean, Acts 5, 29, I think it is, where it says, "We must
00:04:04.160 | obey God rather than men. The Apostles must preach, because the authorities have
00:04:07.720 | told them they shouldn't." And then we have the example of the
00:04:12.720 | the midwives in Exodus, where they wouldn't kill the baby boys, and we have
00:04:16.440 | Daniel, who right after they make the law that you can't pray, he goes up and
00:04:22.240 | kneels down in front of a window and gets thrown into a lion's den, and
00:04:26.440 | Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego won't bow down to the big golden statue, and
00:04:32.360 | Esther is told by Mordecai, "You've got to go to the king, because we're all going to
00:04:37.160 | be killed if you don't go to the king." And she writes back and says, "You can't
00:04:41.160 | go to the king. It's against the law if you go to the king unbidden." And he
00:04:44.960 | writes back and says, "We're going to die anyway." And she says, "Okay, if I perish, I
00:04:49.280 | perish." And she breaks the law. He mercifully raises the golden scepter, and
00:04:53.200 | she's spared, but she was willing to risk breaking the law for the sake of
00:04:58.480 | her people. And so I think the principle is this. Citizens to governments,
00:05:04.480 | children to parents, wives to husbands, church members to elders, all of those
00:05:11.360 | are called to have an appropriate, submissive spirit and to follow
00:05:15.800 | leadership. None of those is considered to be absolute. All of them have the
00:05:21.960 | Lordship of Jesus riding over the Lordship of the Superior, and thus
00:05:28.200 | defining the limits of the Lordship of the Superior. Thank you, Pastor John,
00:05:35.440 | and thank you for listening to this podcast. Email your questions to us at
00:05:38.320 | AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org. You can find thousands of other free resources
00:05:41.680 | online from John Piper at DesiringGod.org. I'm your host Tony
00:05:45.580 | Rehnke, thanks for listening.
00:05:48.560 | [BLANK_AUDIO]