Does Romans 13 really teach limited government?

Considering the most recent Senate activity on Healthcare, The Affordable Care Act (Obama care) has been on a lot of people’s minds lately. Many Christians oppose the ACA and talks of a single payer system because they believe that Romans 13 limits the legitimate purposes of government to “bear the sword” and nothing else. “The Bible says government should get out of healthcare” they say.

This view has been quite attractive to those in the Religious Right as it fits right in with conservative ideology that preaches limited government. But is this really what Romans 13 is saying? I know the traditional evangelical understanding fits nicely within conservative politics but that should not be what determines a biblical passage’s meaning. We need to allow the Word of God to inform our politics rather than the other way around.

In order to really understand what Romans 13 is getting at, we must first look to Romans 12: 14-21. The heart of this passage is urging Christians to not return evil with evil. In other words, Paul is saying it is not the job of the Church to carry out God’s judgement against sin. It is not the job of the church to punish those who do evil.

When you read a lot of Paul’s Epistles, you begin to notice a pattern. When Paul makes a claim about God, he typically anticipates objections to that claim and answers them. That’s what he’s doing in Romans 13.

Paul is anticipating this objection: “If Christians aren’t supposed to punish evil, who is? Should criminals be allowed to run free and do whatever they want?”

Paul answers this objection by arguing that God is actually the one who punishes evil through the arm of the state. We learn two really important truths about government in Romans 13:

1. The State is ultimately established and subservient to God himself (13: 1-2)

2. It is through the State that God punishes evil, rather than the Church (13:4)

As a result of these two truths, the conclusion becomes clear. Paul is saying: “Christians, it is not your job to punish evil so subject yourselves to the government instead.” In fact, Christians are even called so far as to aid government by paying taxes (13: 6-7)

So as we can see, the heart of Romans 13 in context is not saying “the state can only punish evil and nothing else.” That reading is simply not in the text. This passage is ultimately about the Church, not the State. Paul is not interested in fully expounding on what the state can and cannot do. Rather, he is speaking about the Church’s relationship to his justice and why they are not responsible for its execution.

So why do we get the incredibly common interpretation that Paul is limiting government power in this passage? Traditionally, this reading is born out of a concept called “sphere sovereignty” which states that the roles of government and church stand in clear distinction. Therefore if the church is called to help the poor, then that job falls to the church alone. But as we’ve just seen, this distinction is not actually present in the text of Romans 13. However, despite this tradition, I think most people interpret Romans 13 the way they do today because of another reason. It’s because people ultimately want to read Romans 13 like they read the U.S. Constitution. But this is a mistake. Why?

The Constitution and the book of Romans are two very different documents with very different goals. The former concerns how a government should be structured and what it can and cannot do. The latter is focused on how God’s people should experience salvation and live together as full participants of God’s kingdom in the world.

Because of this critical distinction, the Constitution should be read very differently than the book of Romans. In the former, whenever an express power is given to a particular branch of government, it’s assumed that this power is not given to another. So when the Constitution grants congress the power to declare war, it assumes that congress and congress alone has the power to declare war. This means that the executive branch (President) does not have the authority to declare war.

People take that same interpretive lens and apply it to Romans. If Romans 13 argues that it is the job of the government to “bear the sword” against evil, therefore the government is prohibited from doing anything else. Therefore the government shouldn’t be paving roads, setting up libraries, funding disease research, funding education, funding healthcare, creating social safety nets etc. The problem with this view is that Romans 13 is not the Constitution and should not be read as such. Because of this, if you are going to argue that Romans 13 limits government to “bearing the sword” only, you are going to need clear imperative language commanding that very thing. And there is no such language. There is no passage anywhere in the Bible that explicitly says “the government can’t to anything else but punish evil.” It’s just not there.

If you find the above argument compelling, I urge you to stop employing Romans 13 as reasons for why government should stay out of healthcare. Whether the government should be involved in healthcare is simply not an issue the Bible speaks about. And that’s okay. It means we are left with wisdom to best figure out how to deal with the problems of healthcare. And that should level us with a sense of humility. If anyone claims that God is on their side of the political isle, maybe it’s because they are trying to leverage his authority for political power. And that… is idolatry. “No one can serve two masters.”