How Romans 13 Became a Method of Control, and What the Rest of Scripture Says Back

Throughout history, some passages of Scripture have comforted readers, while others have challenged them. Romans 13 is a clear example of a passage often invoked to justify control.

It has been quoted to enslaved people seeking freedom, as well as to those who sought to help them. It was used from pulpits during apartheid in South Africa and in the American South to justify the Fugitive Slave Act. In nearly every age when governments have sought to keep churches compliant and congregations obedient, Romans 13 has surfaced.

Among New Testament verses, it is perhaps the one most consistently used by those in power to justify their authority over the vulnerable. This article argues that such uses of Romans 13 demand close scrutiny because they may reflect personal desire rather than faithful interpretation, and it shows why the passage should not be read as a support for injustice.

Given this history, we should approach the passage with caution. When a text is most frequently cited by those who have oppressed others, it is important to ask whether they understood its meaning correctly or whether they simply used it to serve their own interests. This series will argue that Romans 13 cannot be read as a warrant for injustice.

This series will address that question by thoughtfully and honestly testing Romans 13 against the wider witness of Scripture, while acknowledging the difficulties involved.

To begin, let us consider a thought experiment that will help frame the discussion.

The Thought Experiment

Let us suppose, for the sake of argument, that we interpret Romans 13 in its most literal sense. In this reading, Paul would be saying that all authority, without exception, is established by God, and that every governing power must be obeyed without condition. If we accept this interpretation, we must follow its implications to their logical conclusion, even when those implications are deeply troubling.

This would mean, for example, that we must claim God ordained the Khmer Rouge and its killing fields, where a significant portion of Cambodia’s population was murdered. It would mean that God ordained Stalin’s purges and the gulags, as well as the Third Reich and the machinery of the Holocaust.

Each of these regimes held governing authority and exercised power. If we accept the literalist interpretation of Romans 13, then each of these governments would be seen as carrying divine sanction, and resistance to them would be considered resistance to God. The implication becomes even clearer in the stories that follow.

Under this interpretation, the Hebrew midwives who defied Pharaoh’s order to kill newborns would be considered to have sinned. Early Christians who refused to offer incense to Caesar, and who suffered for that refusal, would be seen as rebelling against God’s established order. Abolitionists who broke the Fugitive Slave Act to help enslaved people escape would be viewed as lawbreakers in a theological sense, defying divinely established authority.

In this framework, individuals we now recognize as moral heroes would instead be cast as wrongdoers. This is the logical outcome of taking the literal reading seriously.

Before we even examine the passage in detail, we can see that a reading of Scripture that casts perpetrators of injustice as God’s servants and those who resist injustice as God’s enemies is deeply problematic. That is the problem this series seeks to name: Romans 13 cannot be read in a way that blesses injustice and still be treated as a faithful account of God’s will. It is difficult to believe that this was Paul’s intended meaning.

The Problem Named

Walter Wink, whose work will occupy the middle of this series, named this problem directly and named it well. He argued that Romans 13 has long been read as an absolute command to obey the government no matter what it does.

Worse, he argued, was that this reading, when fused with a misreading of “turn the other cheek,” produced what he called a passive, doormat-like quality, a version of Christianity that looked cowardly and complicit in the face of injustice. It’s two texts, badly read, reinforcing each other, until submission itself began to look like holiness.

We will examine Wink’s arguments in detail later, evaluating them as carefully as possible. For now, it is important to recognize that the problem he identified is real.

For generations, Christians have been taught, either directly or indirectly, that faithfulness requires compliance and that the proper response to unjust power is simply to remain silent and fulfill civic obligations. This teaching has had serious consequences, and it must be reconsidered in light of Scripture.

However, it is not enough to simply reject the literal reading because we find it unappealing. We must show that this interpretation does not align with the broader message of Scripture. This series will therefore argue that the Bible does not present obedience to unjust authority as a virtue. Rather, it often portrays defiance of unjust authority as an act of heroism from the outset of its narrative.

The Midwives Who Lied to Pharaoh

We can begin in Exodus 1, in the opening movement of Israel’s foundational story.

Pharaoh, frightened by the growth of the Hebrew population, issues a decree of genocidal proportions. Every male Hebrew baby is to be killed at birth. And the instrument of that murder is meant to be the Hebrew midwives themselves, Shiphrah and Puah, women whose entire vocation was to bring life into the world, now conscripted to end it.

They refuse. The text is careful to tell us why: they feared God. And they do not simply refuse quietly.

When Pharaoh demands an explanation, they lie to his face, inventing a story about Hebrew women giving birth too quickly to be caught. Then comes the detail that should stop every literalist. The text tells us that God dealt well with the midwives, and because they feared him, he gave them families of their own.

It is worth considering the structure of this story. The Exodus forms the foundation of Israel’s identity, a story to which the prophets and even Jesus himself return repeatedly. This foundational story begins with two women engaging in civil disobedience against a state that ordered genocide. They deceive the highest authority and are explicitly blessed by God for their actions.

The biblical story of redemption could have begun in many ways, but it begins with an act of defiance, and that matters for how we read authority elsewhere. That pattern continues in the next major example.

The Men Who Would Not Bow

Move forward to the book of Daniel, where the pattern deepens.

In chapter 3, King Nebuchadnezzar erects an enormous golden statue and commands that everyone, at the sound of the music, fall down and worship it. The command is universal, and the penalty is death by fire.

Three Hebrew men, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, refuse. They do not refuse privately or quietly. They refuse publicly, in the open, in a way designed to be seen.

And when they are hauled before the king and given one last chance to comply, they deliver one of the great speeches expressing defiance in all of Scripture, telling Nebuchadnezzar that their God is able to save them, but that even if he does not, they will still not serve the king’s gods or worship his golden image. They are thrown into the furnace, but God saves them.

In chapter 6, it is Daniel himself who continues this pattern. A royal edict forbids prayer to anyone but the king for thirty days. Daniel’s response is not to comply and pray in secret. He goes to his house, opens the windows toward Jerusalem, and prays three times a day, exactly as he always had, in full view of anyone watching. He is arrested, thrown to the lions, but God rescues him.

The pattern in these stories is clear. When state authority demands actions that are idolatrous, the central figures in Scripture refuse to comply. They do so openly and accept the consequences of their actions.

In each case, God vindicates them. This is not rebellion for its own sake, nor is it an attempt to gain political power. Rather, it is an expression of faithfulness at the point where the state requires unfaithfulness. This distinction is key and will guide this discussion of Romans 13.

The Jesus We Would Rather Not Notice

Turning to Jesus, we must recognize that many people hold an image of him as gentle, mild, and always accommodating, someone who remained above political conflict and simply encouraged kindness. While this image may be comforting, it does not accurately reflect the portrayal of Jesus in the Gospels.

In the Gospels, Jesus heals on the Sabbath, often in direct violation of the religious authorities who oversaw the observant life of his community. He was aware that these actions would provoke opposition, yet he continued, making his actions public and deliberate. This was a clear act of defiance against the established religious order.

Let’s also consider Jesus’ actions in the Temple. He entered the central religious and economic institution of his community and overturned the tables of the money changers. This was not a private spiritual act or a moment of personal frustration.

Rather, it was a public protest directed at the intersection of religious authority, economic exploitation, and imperial politics. Clearly, this was not the behavior of someone committed to unconditional submission to existing powers.

Even the teachings of Jesus, most often interpreted as calls for passivity, such as ‘turn the other cheek,’ reveal a more subversive message upon closer examination. We will explore this idea in greater detail later, particularly in relation to Wink’s work.

For now, note that the tradition consistently presents Jesus as someone who confronts unjust authority rather than simply complying with it. That leads naturally to the earliest church.

The Church That Was Born Disobedient

The posture did not die with Jesus. It was carried straight into the life of the earliest church, where the same question of obedience continued to shape the community.

In Acts 5, the apostles are hauled before the highest religious and civil authorities of their people and commanded, in no uncertain terms, to stop teaching in the name of Jesus. Their answer is one of the clearest statements of principled civil disobedience anywhere in Scripture: “We must obey God rather than men.”

The same note had already sounded in Acts 4, when Peter and John, ordered to be silent, asked their accusers to judge whether it was right to obey them rather than God, and then simply kept preaching.

This context is key to understanding the New Testament. The early church did not gradually adopt a posture of disobedience as it gained influence.

Rather, from its very beginning, the church practiced defiance where obedience to the state would have required disobedience to God. The community that produced and first read Romans 13 already understood that there are limits to what any earthly authority can rightly demand.

A Bible That Refuses to Flatter Power

Before concluding, it is important to note another theme that runs throughout the biblical canon. Scripture does not present empire in a positive light, nor does it treat governing power as inherently good or benign. Instead, it frequently portrays authority in negative terms.

In Daniel 7, the great empires of the world appear as monstrous beasts, terrifying and devouring, rising out of a chaotic sea. In Revelation, Rome itself, the very seat of the authority Paul supposedly told Christians to obey without question, is depicted as the great whore of Babylon, drunk on the blood of the saints. And in the Gospels, across Matthew 20, Mark 10, and Luke 22, Jesus describes how the rulers of the nations “lord it over” their subjects, and then tells his disciples plainly that it shall not be so among them. The dominating pattern of worldly authority is named, and it is named as something to be rejected.

Romans 13 must be understood within this broader biblical context. The canon begins its liberation story with midwives who defied a genocidal order, celebrates individuals who chose death over idolatry, presents a Messiah who challenged established authority, and describes a church founded on the refusal to be silenced. Empire itself is depicted in highly negative terms.

Any interpretation of Romans 13 that overlooks this context is not a careful reading, but rather a selective one.

The Principle That Holds It Together

If Scripture consistently celebrates acts of resistance, it is important to clarify the nature of that defiance. The point is not that any type of rebellion is justified.

As scholar Matthew Anslow has observed, civil disobedience in the biblical tradition is a response to injustice or idolatry imposed by authorities. It is not simply a means to achieve personal desires.

This distinction is important, as it prevents the argument from devolving into a justification for any and all rebellion.

The midwives did not defy Pharaoh out of a general dislike for authority, but because he ordered the killing of children. Daniel’s friends did not refuse to bow to the statue simply because they opposed Babylonian rule, but because they were commanded to commit idolatry.

In each case, disobedience springs from a specific demand that cannot be fulfilled without betraying one’s faith. Faithfulness is demonstrated precisely at the point where authority requires unfaithfulness, and not beyond that.

This approach provides a coherent understanding rather than a contradiction. The Bible does not present conflicting messages, instructing obedience in Romans 13 and rebellion elsewhere. Instead, it consistently teaches that governing authority has a legitimate but limited claim on individuals, and that this claim ends when authority demands injustice or idolatry. This is the principle we will apply as we examine Paul’s writings.

Where We Are Going

When we turn to Romans 13 in the following discussion, we will not approach it in isolation. Instead, we will consider it within the wider tradition that values faithful resistance to unjust power, a tradition with which Paul was deeply familiar.

We will see that the context of Rome at the time Paul wrote was unique, and that understanding this context significantly affects our interpretation of the passage. It is also important to remember that Paul himself was ultimately beaten, imprisoned, and executed by the authorities for refusing to cease his ministry.

Romans 13 has often been used to justify tyranny, but this interpretation does not withstand careful examination. To understand the passage properly, we must engage in the patient work of contextual analysis. We will begin that work by exploring the historical realities of first-century Rome.