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Verse 9 in today’s reading clears up a lot of confusion about Christian love, The commandments, “Do not commit adultery,” “Do not murder,” “Do not steal,” “Do not covet,” and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this one rule: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Paul is simply saying we should use love as our gauge for all that we do. If we love others first, we will always do what is right. We need to focus on treating others the way we want to be treated. Do we want to be fed, clothed, and have housing? Then we need to work on those same things for others around us.
Daily Devotion 
There are some elements of this chapter that are both challenging and extremely counter to our modern day Christian beliefs.
Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. Therefore whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves. (Romans 13:1, 2 NKJV)
So to boil it down to it’s simplest form: God’s got this. But where I get hung up is, not just our President, who was appointed by God (if you truly believe what vs1-2 say), but also world leaders and dictators of the past. That’s a tough pill to swallow.
Verse 2 is where it gets even harder, those who resist will bring judgement on themselves. That one is going to take some more prayer and thinking through.
No kidding Brian! I too, had a hard time with this, but I read it through the lense of what Steve Burger quotes as the toughest verse to believe. ( Romans 8:28 ) I think it’s much easier to swallow when you know that God will take any circumstance or situation and turn it around for his glory. It’s all apart of God infinite wisdom! Adoff Hitlers time in power is harder for me to swallow then what is happening in America today.
This passage regarding submission to government authority is often misunderstood. It is the passage that allowed the German church to submit to Hitler and take part in the killing of the Jews (along with many other passages that Hitler misused to co-opt the church).
As with anything in the Bible, you have to look at the context and the specific audience it is geared towards, and then interpret it that way. This letter was written in 57 A.D. Nero was in power, but in the early part of his reign. There doesn’t seem to be much indication that he was a tyrant at this point. The Jews had been expelled in 49 A.D., but that was under Claudius. Things at this point seemed pretty stable politically. Arguments have been made that the possibility that Jewish nationalism had reached violent levels in Rome and for that reason they were expelled. There are others suggest that certain early Christians had thrown off all restraint in light of their heavenly calling and regarded “earthly authorities with indifference or contempt.”
Regardless, he was writing specifically to the Roman gentiles who were living in a stable system without tyrannical oppression. It seems that he is writing about a good government. Obviously, not perfect, but a good government. There are plenty of examples in the Bible of people speaking against/challenging the government or outright breaking the law i.e. Daniel, Rahab, Moses’ parents, Jesus. We can’t be so naive as to just blindly submit to government. Jesus addressed this exact question when he was asked about paying the head tax. The point of that story wasn’t that we just pay our taxes and submit fully to government all the time no matter what. He was saying, “Hey. Who’s picture is on the coin? Oh, Ceasar’s? Well, then it must be his. Give it back. But give everything else to God.” Submitting to God trumps everything. Bonhoeffer thought deeply about this question of the church’s role with the state during Hitler’s rule. He was battling this naive, blind submission. In the end, he basically said that he had to do what he knew God was calling him to do. He knew that Hitler was evil and had to be acted against. He went so far as to be involved in the Valkyrie assassination plot. A preacher actively involved in the killing of another human? That’s really heavy. I think we need to be very careful in reading this passage, and not just do a cursory reading of it and decide that God is telling us to blindly submit. There are things that government does that we may not necessarily agree with, but it is of no major consequence so we let it go. But there are other times when government is sanctioning the killing of innocent people, or is willfully oppressing people…will we really just sit by and claim Romans 13?
Great reply!! Makes a lot of sense!! Thanks.
One other thing to remember. Our founding father’s understood that government could grow to be very evil because of their personal experience. Therefore, they set up the first type of government in world history that gave the power of governance to the people, that gave pathways for reform that were within the legal limits. And we have seen the people of this country rise up within those legal limits to challenge the government. Our experience in this American experiment is the first and most unique in history, and it’s something not to be taken for granted. A naive reading of Romans 13 could cause us to lose this experiment if we forget that we actually have the blessing of legal means to stand up against government when we feel it has turned or is turning towards evil.
Yes!!!! Amen.