As Christian believers, we need to know, biblically, what the relationship should be between the Christian church and the State. In the Old Testament, we see a theocracy manifested in the midst of God’s people, a close relationship between the priestly class and royal families. In the New Testament, we see a different picture. As the church spread throughout the Roman Empire, Christians had to learn how best to relate to pagan authorities. The same can be said to be the case today. The majority of countries are not founded on a Christian worldview, thus, Christians need to know, in light of the Bible, their role in relation to these non-Christian governments.
For this reason, it is important to discuss Christian political ethics, that is to say, the ethics of the gospel in politics. To better understand this term, let us remember that ethics is the set of rules that govern a society or community. When we talk about gospel ethics, we talk about this as our standard of life, of the gospel in our daily actions. For every believer, Scripture is his or her standard of ethics. Since there are “gospel ethics” for the family, work, church, etc., we will address the issue of our ethics in the face of the state and politics, and we will do this working through Romans 13.
Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For 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. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God’s wrath but also for the sake of conscience. For because of this you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing (Rom. 13:1-6).
To talk about the ethical principles of the gospel contained in this biblical text, it is important to contextualize it. This letter of Romans was written to Christians living under the Roman Empire, particularly, in Rome, where Emperors were worshipped as gods. For this reason, Christians were often persecuted because they did not participate in this imperial cult. They were accused of being atheists and heretics, because they worshipped Jesus as God, above every and all authority. This is why Paul writes to the Christians in Rome to reaffirm that Jesus is the only sovereign to whom we owe ourselves in service and worship. In this context, in Romans 12, Paul speaks of the role of the church, and then, in Romans 13, of the role of the State. In the above cited passage, Paul develops four fundamental principles about the relationship between the two institutions, which must determine our ethics or behaviour in the face of politics. In this first part, we will address the first three, and in the second, we will talk about the fourth:
a) The fundamental principle of government is strength
A government possesses the legal structure and the legal right to exercise strength of force in order for citizens to comply with the laws of the land; that is why it says in v. 4 that he (the State) carries the sword, because the sword has been handed down, delegated, to the State by God. If a government cannot coerce its citizens to comply with the laws (i.e., though shalt not murder), it loses its ability to govern.
b) Every earthly authority is delegated, it is not absolute (self-derived)
Only God is sovereign over all creation. He is the one who has absolute power and authority. Therefore, only He can constitute and delegate earthly authority. Every earthly authority depends on and is subject to God, so the exercise of the State’s authority does not necessarily correspond to the will of the people, but it serves the people by obeying the will of the One who delegated its authority: God; and it will need to answer to Him for all its actions. No human authority is absolute (it is not self-derived), nor is it forever, but has been established by God to fulfill specific functions.
c) The authority of the Government is determined by God, not by men
Biblically, the government has three principial functions: The first and most important is to protect the people from evil and to preserve human life and dignity, to promote good, and to punish evil. The second is to protect private property (since the Old Testament we see that God gave land to the tribes of Israel, and the king and the Law protected the distribution of that property); and the third is to seek justice in all kinds of relationships.
Because of these three functions that we find in the Bible, rulers are called “servants of God”, because even if they are not believers (Christians), the authorities of a country are supposed to issue laws that promote the righteousness of God (not that of their parties and interests), in accordance with the creational order and that which has been established by God in His Word. That is why the text in Romans 13 does not speak of whether rulers and governors are believers or not, because the government does not exist to govern the family, the school, but to protect the good and to rebuke evil, as defined by God.
When a civilian government departs from these functions and seeks to want to control or govern the other spheres that God has created: church, family, art, science, etc.; it is abusing its power and loses legitimacy in God’s eyes. This is the essence of the separation between the State and church.
A State commits abuses when it tries to define the family, marriage, church, what should be preached from the pulpit, and how it should organize itself; because God has already defined this in His Word. The State is not there to rule your family, but to protect it and to curb the evil that wants to attack it. That is how far the State’s power goes in the Bible, that is its limit.
The same can be said for the church. The Christian church is an institution established by God to make disciples of Christ, not through strength of force or by the sword, but through the service of the gospel. The church should not pretend that the State behaves just like itself, nor should the State intend to govern it, but the State is bound by God to guarantee the church’s freedom and to protect it from its enemies. On the other hand, it is the church’s obligation to pray for and submit to its authorities when they issue laws that seek to fulfill God’s purpose; and to be the moral conscience of the State and to rebuke it when it does not fulfill its purpose.
It is not for the State to preach, just as it is not for the church to rule and/or govern the world. Both authorities have been established by God, but with different roles, and they must serve and complement one another.