Romans 13:1-7 · Featured Study
The Governing Authorities
Paul tells a young, watched congregation in Nero’s Rome to be in subjection to the higher powers, because the office itself, not any ruler’s character, is God’s own ordinance. The same chapter that grounds the ruler’s sword also grounds a Christian’s conscience. This page walks the seven verses in order, then names the honest limit Scripture itself draws, through its own counter-scenes, not through any modern case.
Titian, The Tribute Money (1516) — Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
The Text
Romans 13:1-7, in full
ROMANS 13:1-2 (ASV)
“Let every soul be in subjection to the higher powers: for there is no power but of God; and the powers that be are ordained of God. Therefore he that resisteth the power, withstandeth the ordinance of God: and they that withstand shall receive to themselves judgment.”
ROMANS 13:3-4 (ASV)
“For rulers are not a terror to the good work, but to the evil. And wouldest thou have no fear of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise from the same: for he is a minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is a minister of God, an avenger for wrath to him that doeth evil.”
ROMANS 13:5-7 (ASV)
“Wherefore ye must needs be in subjection, not only because of the wrath, but also for conscience’ sake. For for this cause ye pay tribute also; for they are ministers of God’s service, attending continually upon this very thing. Render to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honor to whom honor.”
Romans is dated to roughly AD 57, written from Corinth near the end of Paul’s third missionary journey, to a church he had not yet visited. He wrote this chapter during Nero’s early reign, a period historians generally regard, through the influence of Seneca and Burrus, as comparatively moderate government, years before Nero’s later turn to persecution. Rome’s Jewish and Jewish-Christian community had only recently returned after Claudius’s expulsion edict (Acts 18:2, c. AD 49): a young, watched congregation is exactly who Paul is writing to.
Ordained of God
13:1-2: the office, not the officeholder
Paul’s grounding is not a claim about any particular ruler’s character. It is a claim about the office. Two Greek terms carry the weight: hypotassō, “be in subjection,” a military-derived word for ordered rank, not annihilated will, and exousia, “power” or “authority,” the word this page’s own word study unpacks below. Government as such, the ordering of society under authority, is treated here as God’s institution, the same logic already present after the flood (Genesis 9:6) and spoken by Jesus himself to Pilate: “Thou wouldest have no power against me, except it were given thee from above” (John 19:11).
Let every soul be subject to the supreme powers - An admonition peculiarly needful for the Jews. Power, in the singular number, is the supreme authority; powers are they who are invested with it.
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament, 1755Evangelical
Rom 13:1
Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers,.... The apostle having finished his exhortations to this church, in relation to the several duties incumbent upon both officers and private Christians, as members of a church, and with reference to each other, and their moral conduct in the world; proceeds to advise, direct, and exhort them to such duties as were relative to them as members of a civil society; the former chapter contains his Christian Ethics, and this his Christian Politics.
John Gill· Exposition of the New Testament, 1748Particular Baptist
Rom 13:1
By him kings reign, Prov. viii. The usurpation of power and the abuse of power are not of God, for he is not the author of sin; but the power itself is. As our natural powers, though often abused and made instruments of sin, are from God's creating power, so civil powers are from God's governing power.
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible, 1710Nonconformist
Rom 13:1-4
Whosoever therefore resisteth the power--“So that he that setteth himself against the authority.” resisteth the ordinance of God; and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation--or, “condemnation,” according to the old sense of that word; that is, not from the magistrate, but from God, whose authority in the magistrate's is resisted.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible, 1871Reformed
Rom 13:2
The Sword
13:3-4: minister of God, twice in two verses
“Terror” is aimed at evil work, not good; the ruler is called diakonos, “minister,” the same word used elsewhere of church servants, twice in these two verses, then ekdikos, “avenger,” once more. The passage grounds the state’s power of the sword, capital and coercive punishment, in divine delegation: the same logic Genesis 9:6 already states after the flood.
But do you wish, he says, not to fear the power? Do what is good, and you will have praise from it; for it is God's minister to you for good. But if you do what is evil, be afraid: for not without cause does it bear the sword; for it is God's minister, an avenger in wrath upon him who does what is evil. Paul moves me in these words, in that he calls the worldly power and the judge of this world God's minister; and this he repeats not once, but a second and a third time.
Origen of Alexandria· Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, 253Alexandrian
Rom 13:3-4
Hence it appears that laws with penalties for the lawless and disobedient (1 Tim. i. 9) must be constituted in Christian nations, and are agreeable with, and not contradictory to, the gospel. When men are become such beasts, such ravenous beasts, one to another, they must be dealt with accordingly, taken and destroyed in terrorem, to deter others.
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible, 1710Nonconformist
Rom 13:4-6
Conscience, Not Only Wrath
13:5
The turn from external compulsion to internal conviction: obedience is not mere fear-avoidance but a matter for a Christian’s own conscience. Albert Barnes frames the whole seven-verse unit as Paul stating “the great principles on which all Christians are to act,” reaching beyond the immediate Roman situation to every believer under civil government.
This is a good argument, but it is low for a Christian. We must be subject, not only for wrath, but for conscience' sake; not so much formidine poenae, from the fear of punishment, as virtutis amore, from the love of virtue.
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible, 1710Nonconformist
Rom 13:5
Tribute, Custom, Fear, Honor
13:6-7: four obligations, one verse
Four distinct obligations named together, escalating from money (tribute, custom) to disposition (fear, honor). Jesus is asked almost this exact question directly, and answers it inside his own scene at Render Unto Caesar (Mark 12:13-17 and parallels): the same principle of rendering what is due, worked out at a coin.
For this cause pay ye tribute also - Because civil government is an order of God, and the ministers of state must be at considerable expense in providing for the safety and defense of the community, it is necessary that those in whose behalf these expenses are incurred should defray that expense; and hence nothing can be more reasonable than an impartial and moderate taxation, by which the expenses of the state may be defrayed, and the various officers, whether civil or military, who are employed for the service of the public, be adequately remunerated.
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible, 1832Wesleyan Methodist
Rom 13:6
Render therefore ... This injunction is often repeated in the Bible; see the notes at Matthew 22:21; see also Matthew 17:25-27; 1 Peter 2:13-17; Proverbs 24:21. It is one of the most lovely and obvious of the duties of religion. Christianity is not designed to break in upon the proper order of society, but rather to establish and confirm that order.
Albert Barnes· Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New TestamentsPresbyterian
Rom 13:7
What This Passage Does Not Settle
the honest frame, told through Scripture's own scenes
Romans 13:1-7 states a general rule: be subject, the office is from God. It does not, in its own words, address what a Christian owes a ruler who commands sin outright. Scripture supplies its own answer to that narrower question, in its own scenes, and this page teaches through those rather than any modern case.
The midwives who feared GodExodus 1:17
Shiphrah and Puah, the Hebrew midwives, refuse Pharaoh’s direct order to kill Hebrew infant boys: “the midwives feared God, and did not as the king of Egypt commanded them, but saved the men-children alive.” The text does not condemn the refusal; the very next verses say God dealt well with them for it (Exodus 1:20-21).
Daniel's windowDaniel 6:10
After Darius’s decree makes prayer to anyone but the king a capital offense, Daniel continues praying toward Jerusalem three times a day, “as he did aforetime.” It is not a new act of defiance staged for effect. It is the simple continuance of an existing practice of obedience to God, in the face of a law built to trap him for exactly that.
We must obey God rather than menActs 5:29
Peter and the apostles answer the Sanhedrin’s direct order to stop preaching Christ with the closest thing the New Testament carries to a programmatic statement of the limit, from the same apostolic circle Paul belonged to. John Gill names the boundary plainly: “men, civil magistrates, and ecclesiastical rulers, are to be obeyed in things which are not repugnant to the will of God; but in things that are, God is to be obeyed, and not men.”
Paul, writing this very chapter under Nerothe honest tension, named and left standing
The author who wrote “the powers that be are ordained of God” wrote it during Nero’s early, comparatively moderate years. Within about a decade, church tradition holds that same imperial power, in a later and far crueler phase of Nero’s reign, put Paul to death. Paul is not living in contradiction of his own words. He taught submission to civil order as a general rule, and he was executed by that same order’s later cruelty. This page states the tension and leaves it standing rather than resolving it into a formula.
Every instance above stays inside Scripture’s own witness. No modern ruler, nation, party, or event appears anywhere on this page.
The Limits of Obedience
positions, and who holds each, across church history
The earliest treatment in the church’s reception of this passage already names the limit. Origen, writing his Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans around AD 253, reads verse 2 this way:
He is not here speaking of those powers which bring persecutions upon the faith; for in that case it must be said: We ought to obey God rather than men. Rather he is speaking of those ordinary powers which are not a terror to the good work, but to the evil: and whoever resists these certainly procures damnation for himself according to the quality of his deeds.
Origen of Alexandria· Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, 253Alexandrian
Rom 13:2
Later church history holds three distinct, named positions on how far the general rule extends. Each is presented at its own weight, and the gracious rule governs: these are differing positions among Christian brothers across history, not one refuting another.
Near-unlimited submission
Martin Luther’s Temporal Authority: To What Extent It Should Be Obeyed(1523) argues Christians owe civil rulers submission even under an unjust ruler, an unjust ruler still being God’s instrument. Luther’s own life carries the same narrow exception this page names elsewhere: at the Diet of Worms (1521) he refused an imperial order to recant, “my conscience is captive to the Word of God.” Both halves are named together, not one erasing the other.
The Reformed resistance tradition
John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion(1559), Book IV, closes with a carefully limited exception: “lesser magistrates,” officers with a formal duty to check royal power, may resist a tyrant who oversteps lawful authority, while private citizens still may not act alone. Later Calvinists went further: John Knox’s History of the Reformation in Scotland argues for a duty to resist rulers who suppress true religion.
The Anabaptist witness
The Schleitheim Confession (1527), Article VI, teaches that the sword is “ordained of God outside the perfection of Christ”: civil government is real and legitimate, instituted by God for the world, but a disciple who follows Christ’s own example does not wield it, hold civil office exercising coercive power, or resist evil by force, even in self-defense. Menno Simons taught the same nonresistant posture.
The Word Behind It
exousia: delegated, never self-generated
The Voices
with the work named
Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament (1755) · public domain
Glosses "power" singular as the supreme authority itself, "powers" plural as those invested with it, at 13:1.
Exposition of the New Testament (1746-1748) · public domain
Frames chapter 13 as Paul's "Christian Politics" following chapter 12's "Christian Ethics."
Commentary on the Whole Bible (1710) · public domain
Distinguishes the office of civil power, which is of God, from its abuse, which never is; reads the sword as grounding penal law under the gospel.
Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) · public domain
Reads "resisteth" at 13:2 as setting oneself against the authority as such, with judgment coming from God, not merely the magistrate.
Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (c. 253) · public domain
The earliest treatment in the pool: already names the limit later readers rediscover, that Paul is not speaking of powers that persecute the faith.
Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments (1832-1869) · public domain
Cross-references the same rendering principle at Matthew 22:21, Matthew 17:25-27, and 1 Peter 2:13-17: this instruction recurs across the New Testament.
Marcus Brown's own commentary leads above all; within a tier, all voices are equal.
Word studies
The Hebrew and Greek under this study, each word in its own room.
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