Romans 13:1-4 Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. 2 Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. 3 For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and you will be commended. 4 For the one in authority is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.
You might be surprised to see Romans 13:1-4 in this series given that it is the passage most commonly cited by "Christian" Nationalists themselves to justify their subservience to whichever human authority (including those which commit great evil) they have hitched their wagon to.
The thing is, Paul isn't advocating here for a union of Church and State, far from it. What Paul is talking about is much more akin to Jesus', "give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s." (Matthew 22:21) What Paul is teaching is that the idea of human authority, including governmental authority, ultimately comes from God. We have not been called by the Gospel to become anarchists, it doesn't matter if that impulse comes from the Right or the Left, it is fundamentally contrary to God's design for human society. Any Rand was wrong about this, along with much else. {The Philosophy of Ayn Rand: Hatred of the authority of God, a post I wrote, ironically, just as the COVID pandemic was starting and governmental authority would be a major worldwide topic}.
Nowhere in Paul's words does he envision a union between the governmental authority established by God with the Bride of Christ. Given Paul's very negative history with the Sanhedrin, a group that had compromised its moral authority beyond recognition to wield power under both Herod and the Romans, and the Church's understanding of the Roman Empire as the greatest danger facing early believers, we would not expect Paul to be someone who would want to see religious and political authority working hand-in-glove. Yet, it was not personal experience, or practical reasons, that held Paul back from proposing that the followers of Jesus Christ seek political power in his name, it was his respect for the providential design of God's will, a design in which God's people had all the power they would ever need to change the world in servanthood.
We can have a conversation about what Christian theology has to say about rebellion, revolutions, and non-violent resistance, and we should include Romans 13:1-4 in our study of God's Word with respect to these topics, but we would be dishonoring God's Word if we allowed these words of Paul to be used to justify turning our backs on the evil that governments do, especially when those governments wrap themselves in a Christian flag.
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