“Governments are just small groups of people who claim the right to rule their neighbors, and The State is the mythology woven to justify this claim.”
- Jacob Tothe
Your knee-jerk reaction is, of course, "I know what Romans 13 is about; God wants us to obey the government."
Let's take a look at the facts.
For decades I've been bludgeoned from the pulpit by preachers wielding the club of Romans 13. "Obey the government!" is the universal cry.
But have you ever stopped to examine those preachers' underlying assumptions? Can Paul possibly be talking about the state?
Perhaps it takes a simple, child-like mind to see that Romans 13 can't conceivably be describing anything remotely like the governments we have known all of our lives.
We'll start by looking at what Paul actually says:
"For rulers (Greek ἄρχων) are not a cause of fear for good behavior, but for evil. Do you want to have no fear of authority? Do what is good and you will have praise from the same; for it is a minister of God to you for good. But if you do what is evil, be afraid; for it does not bear the sword for nothing; for it is a minister of God, an avenger who brings wrath on the one who practices evil."
- Romans 13:3-4, emphasis added
Now, let's compare this description to just a few clear-cut, virtually universal cases in point, examples that (for any thinking person) should dispel the myth that Paul is speaking about the governments we live under:
Surely, building a house to shelter your family is "good behavior," is it not? Do state rulers praise you for doing so? No! Instead, they make it as difficult as possible, requiring endless permits and fees. When you've completed the herculean task, they force you to pay—again and again, year after year—to remain in your house with your family, under threat of stealing it from you and selling it to someone else.
Is supporting your family good or evil behavior? When you work hard, the better you do at providing for your family, the more praise ought to be due you from the "rulers" described in Romans 13. Instead, the harder you work, the more the state takes away from you.
What about saving money for your family's future? Surely that is good behavior, is it not? What does the state do? It punishes you for saving by printing more money, inflating the money supply and making every dollar you earn worth less.
What about "the one who practices evil?" Are they punished? Consider:
These are but a few possible examples. I'm sure you've heard of others.
Open your eyes. The claim that Romans 13 describes existing governments flies in the face of all observable evidence. What Paul is actually talking about is good government, God's preferred form of 100% voluntary local government, the ecclesia.
Nation states and all other "governments" that do not explicitly recognize Jesus as King and Lord over the entirety of their structure and operation are illegitimate, renegade organizations that are—in all truth—anti-Christ.
God is in the process of destroying and replacing all forms of government that do not explicitly recognize Jesus as King and Lord. The sooner we recognize this, the better off we all will be.
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