“For the rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God’s servant for your good.” Romans 13:3
The state isn’t a moral free agent, nor an entity empowered by the whimsical and ever-changing will of the people. That’s an enormous blessing right there. The great tempestuousness that is modern politics is because man refuses to live under God’s rule and seeks to assert his own arbitrary moral code upon others. When he can’t do it through force of arms, he does it in other ways. Sometimes he uses deception and fraud. Sometimes he uses the ballot box. Often today, he uses both. The point is, God’s law brings freedom; man’s rule is always tyrannical. Thus, the true path to peace is through submission to God’s definition of the facts of reality and, to our point, the correct understanding of the governing authorities in life.
The state, as God ordains it, is a “terror” to bad conduct. Let’s consider this.
Some have argued that this passage (that we must submit to the governing authorities) of Romans means that God sanctioned even the evil of Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia or slavery in the South. That’s preposterous in that “rulers” are called God’s servants for the good of citizens. And, since God is self-consistent, his moral law is the standard for good and evil, right and wrong. We can understand, therefore, a nation like Nazi Germany as a nation of sin in that the leaders abused their authority and substituted God’s moral law with their own. It’s the same with private sin too. Private sin is the replacing of God’s definition of reality with our own. The thing with government is, though, that the individual is quite limited in the reach of their action whereas the state, choosing sin, has far greater impact.
When we look at King David’s famous sins, we often separate the two – his adultery with Bathsheba and his later murder of her husband, Uriah. The two sins are connected, though. All sin will lead to oppression and murder if the sinner is situated such that he/she can carry it out. King David, having the levers of law at his fingertips, sought to cover up his adultery and Bathsheba’s resulting pregnancy. When his subterfuge failed because Uriah was the man of honor that he wasn’t (and this is a painful thing to reflect upon because King David is undoubtedly a Biblical hero), the King flat out had him murdered.
We see this principle also in the story of King Ahab and Naboth in 1 Kings 21.
Ahab wanted Naboth’s property because it was next to his. He offered him money or better property in exchange. Naboth declined the offer and Ahab – seriously, this happened – went home to bed, pouting. Like a grumpy teenager. Well, Ahab’s wife, Jezebel, “solved” the problem by working up a conspiracy against poor Naboth and eventually had him murdered. This is the nature of ungodly governments; they’ll always abuse their power because they don’t fear God.
This is the context in which we must understand this principle. God’s word defines good and bad. Man’s political and ethical exertions, outside of God’s word, will always lead to the oppression – that is, the denial of equal rights, of free speech and property – of other men and women. Man’s law, shot through with contradictions, will never allow for freedom but will force some group or another to submit to arbitrary standards or face personal violence (assault) or government/organized suppression.
Therefore, the civil authority, identified as God’s servant, must never insert itself into civilian affairs unless there is direct personal evil for which a man or woman would need to be avenged. Any attempt to make men good – that is, to punish private sin or outlaw it – is a violation of the principle set forth here. No government has a right to violate God’s moral order but is, in point of fact, charged with enforcing the interpersonal aspects of it. Murder and theft, as seen above, were prohibited even to the King of Israel since God judged both rather harshly. No human authority has, therefore, a blank check, so to speak, but is restrained and defined by God’s moral ordering of their affairs. Any coloring outside these lines results in chaos, oppression, poverty, violence and even war.
For example, in 1 Samuel 25, David, not yet king of Israel, had a conflict with a rich man named Nabal. As it went, David and his army had provided protection for Nabal’s men when they were vulnerable to roaming criminal gangs, shielding them from attack. As a token of appreciation, David sent word to Nabal that he’d like his men to be able to share in a feast Nabal was having with his people. Well, Nabal, despite his affluence, railed against David and insulted him to his men. In response, David was rightly offended. What he didn’t have a right to do, however, was go and kill Nabal, which is exactly what he set out to do at that point.
What stopped him from unjustly slaughtering Nabal and his people was Nabal’s precocious wife, Abigail. She actually set out and intercepted David’s war party and told him that, in effect, that, yes, Nabal was evil and wrong but that David would be guilty of worse – bloodguilt, in fact – if he carried out his plan. In an amazing story of honor and humility, David repented! Imagine that. There was David and his mighty men, bound for battle, indignant and full of fury, and he relented at the word of this lone woman in front of all his men. What a scene!
Of course, the next day Nabal died. Scripture says that the Lord struck him. In that way, Nabal died of “natural” causes and David didn’t sin.
This is how the Lord avenges if He sees fit. Either way, whether God let Nabal live another 100 years or not, David had no moral right to take vengeance since he wasn’t physically wronged. Nabal certainly insulted him. Indeed. Nabal was absolutely a fool, as his name suggests, but being an unthankful and greedy fool is allowed in this age. God will judge. David was certainly right in being angry, but not in seeking vengeance. In the future he would have been justified in not providing any protection for Nabal’s people. That’s the principle of freedom. What David couldn’t do – nor can you or I – is use force, our own or that of the Lord’s servant, his civil magistrate – to punish such a slight.
The principle is that the use of force can only be approved morally by God when it’s defensive. Thus, the principle of the civil magistrate’s use of force is that it’s self-defensive by nature. The Lord’s servant must not ever direct the use of force against anyone who has not used it directly in the first place. We repeat: no use of force is ever to be sanctioned unless God sanctions it. God and His Word are the standard of ethics, after all. All appeals to standards outside of God’s Word fall into logical disrepair, are internally inconsistent and externally at variance with the facts of reality (that is, always leads to the taking of liberty from others and, therefore, violence). Thus, in the New Testament era, all use of force is restrained to immediate self-defense for the individual and as retaliatory vengeance by the state. All proper use of force is self-defense in the age of the gospel. This alone provides for the relative peace and social tranquility that will best allow the ambassadors of Christ to spread His message of reconciliation. The goal of this personal and civil order is, just so we’re clear, the spreading of the gospel of Jesus Christ. This is God’s doing and it’s marvelous in that in His wisdom, infinite and ineffable, He provides for safety so that His ministers might reason with the lost. In this way, a man like me can say, “I teach self-defense for the glory of Christ…in Christ, because of Christ and for Christ.”
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