Romans 13: God’s View of Government

Romans 13 offers a convicting insight regarding a Christian worldview of government. The chapter’s opening verse sets the tone:

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.

Government comes from God (Not the devil, contrary to popular opinion.). Interestingly, these words were written when Nero was Paul’s governing leader, a tyrant much worse than most (if not all) of today’s national leaders. To put it another way, if Paul told Christians to obey the government when Nero was in charge, what does that mean for us today?

At the least, we are to obey the law. Plus, if the government is ordained by God, then it would make sense to speak respectfully of our governing leaders. Of course, our American culture connects conservative Christians with conservative political talking heads who bash big government and its related ills. And while there is room for much discussion, this has become a weak point rather than a strong point for those who follow Christ in our culture.

So how about a challenge today? Make it a goal to last the entire day without saying anything bad about your nation’s government and take some time to pray for the nation’s leaders. If enough Christians did this, maybe we would be known as Christian “by our love” as the apostle John wrote rather than for our spite toward our nation’s leaders.

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Dillon Burroughs is the author or co-author of numerous books and is handwriting a copy of all 31,173 verses of the Bible at HolyWritProject.com. Find out more about Dillon at Facebook.com/readdB or readdB.com.