So much for now on our secondary relation to "all men" (Rm. 12:17) — how it is to be peaceful "if it be possible" (Rm. 12:18), but one of our overcoming them and conquering them with the good of Christianity if it is a matter of their opposition to Christ with evil (Rm. 12:21). However we find again that the end of one "chapter" of Romans is very much needed to understand the start of the next, when Paul begins speaking of government in Romans 13. This tends to be the case when a divinely-inspired man writes a continuous letter and then others, with degrees of inspiration unknown, break his letter into sections centuries later. Paul in 12:21 just told us not to be overcome by evil, and he in Romans 13:1-7 makes what on the surface seems to be a wild and naive assumption for a man with knowledge of Greek political philosophy, and an ironic one for a man who would be killed by Emperor Nero a few short years later. He at first glance seems to say here that all governing authorities are approved of by God, are good in nature, punish only evil, and never harm those doing good, as written in these KJV-translated words: "Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation. For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same: For he is the 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 the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil. Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake. For for this cause pay ye tribute also: for they are God's ministers, attending continually upon this very thing. Render therefore to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honour to whom honour."
Most mature readers of course reflect and realize that God and Paul are not here telling us that all governments are approved of by God in terms of their actions, but only that they all are allowed by the omnipotent God to rule on earth, whether they do so according to his will or not. Most agree that he is only telling us generally speaking that governments punish wrongdoing and reward good, and that we generally therefore should not conflict with the government laws which we live under if we are living Christian lives. Most people who are executed by governments have incurred that penalty by actions which when judged by Christian values are in truth "evil." Yet fundamentally important is that we do not have to look far to find an exception to this general rule, which proves that there are in truth exceptions to the entire passage, since Paul himself was executed by a government for preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. He was executed by an evil authority in Nero for having done the greatest good. Logically, if all sword executions by a human ruler are a not-in-vain ministry of God to execute wrath on an evil doer, then that would make Paul evil because he was beheaded. That one act of capital punishment would invalidate not only the very Paul through whom we are trying to understand God, but would also invalidate the Christian gospel which was the "evil" that he was beheaded for. The only reasonable conclusion is that Paul in Romans 13 was giving us a general rule of conduct and not an absolute rule of conduct — for holding true to most times but for breaking when there is a valid exception such as his.
Paul was killed in 65 A.D. The year before that, 64 A.D. "in the consulate of Gaius Laecanius and Marcus Licinius," the 15th book of the Annals of Tacitus records that an even more horrific incident occurred when Nero was indeed what Paul might have called a "terror to good works." Since he was being blamed for the Great Fire that was ravaging Rome, he in vain blamed Christians and executed the wrath of Satan rather than of God by gruesomely decimating an untold number of these innocent men and women. The original text reads, "Nero substituted as culprits, and punished with the utmost refinements of cruelty...Christians...they were covered with wild beasts' skins and torn to death by dogs; or they were fastened on crosses, and, when daylight failed were burned to serve as lamps by night. Nero had offered his Gardens for the spectacle, and gave an exhibition in his Circus" (15.44). Do Christians today deny that this happened, and do any deny that the government was then acting in a way that was an exception to Romans 13:1-7? An anecdote does not establish a general rule itself, but it does establish possibility, which when that possibility breaks another rule, then that other rule is not absolute but general. Romans 13:1-7 must therefore be a general rule and not an absolute rule, and interpreting it as such does not violate any Christian principle of the "inerrant word of God." It only uses God-instituted logic and undeniable knowledge of his allowed history to determine where God wants us to break through the ambiguity of language to understand more exactly what that word of God is telling us. Without properly using God's grant of logic, there is truly not a single verse in the Bible that cannot be misinterpreted. Some verses are easier to understand than others, but is there any Christian in the world who genuinely thinks that there is no possibility of a government acting in evil rather than good? To find a more recent example, after the anti-monarchical revolutions of the prior centuries broke down the world's order, there have been enough violations of Paul's general rule to make a very long list, whether committed by Jacobins or communists or democrats.
Before anyone scoffs at the inclusion of democrats beside of communists, we should without delay put forth the radical concept that the violation of the First Commandment by a government is the most flagrant violation of all. Judging by the Old Testament in which national compliance with the First Commandment is presented as the concept above all concepts, it would not have been a radical idea then, at least to the wise who understood. Elijah risked his life to change a government that was not prohibiting personal worship of the true God, but was not committed to allegiance to that true God. They at that time had transitioned into a multi-religious society, but Elijah's resistance to the power did not cause him to receive to himself damnation — but instead the utmost honor, as evidenced by the transfiguration and by his life's prominent place in New Testament prophecy. Will any revolutionaries like Elijah be damned today if they resist secular democracies in order to establish Christian monarchies that fulfill the First Commandment, as it now applies per Jesus Christ? No, they will more likely be honored in heaven for all eternity.
Does Elijah's Scripture therefore conflict with Paul's Scripture? Of course it does not, as we have just seen that his Romans 13 political advice therein must be made of general rules. Although the Roman Empire becoming administratively Christian any time soon was perhaps beyond his wildest dreams, Paul's entire life attests that he would have jumped at the chance to replace Nero with a Constantine immediately. Laying foundations for a Christian Roman Empire was exactly what he had been doing in Rome's provinces, what he was doing at the very moment he wrote to Rome itself by letter, and what he hoped to and would do in Rome itself in person. As his many epistles and the evangelists' Gospels communicate to us in many different phrases, there is no halfway Christianity but only a Christianity of total allegiance — in the door by the faith of the New Covenant and in living obedience foremost by promotion of the First Commandment. Christians today should be suspicious of those who try to dissuade us from acting as Elijah and as Paul, which was to serve God on a national and even global level. There cannot be the slightest doubt that Paul wanted every one of the world's governments to be as singularly dedicated to the true Trinitarian God as Elijah wanted Israel to be singularly dedicated to the same God whom he understood as "Yahweh." Since the cataclysm of Jesus Christ's ministry and the earthly onset of the New Covenant, our aims should be to Christianize the world and the world's governments. For a Zionist, Judaizer, fake Christian, or confused Christian to try to discourage us from our active service to Christ with allusions to Christ's final victory in the End Times goes against the very essence of "living sacrifice," against the Great Commission, and against the First Commandment. Observe how the same often try to twist the Scriptures to justify a modern Christ-hating nation of Israel when they take land in the Middle East. Yes, Satan and the Zionist certainly would like for us genuine Christians to be docile and to let the forces of evil conquer the earth, for us to sit on our hands while they establish governments and laws in conflict with our Christian God and our Christian people. Where there is evil, we should rather overcome evil with good now as Paul advises us, in imitation of Christ who will indeed overcome all evil in the final days. We are to wait for Christ actively not passively (Mt. 10:33-39). Since Christ is in us, it should not be too difficult to give Satan's minions a spectacular preview of what is to come, as we do God's will on earth here and now as he told us to.
In Romans 13:1-7, we said that Paul began speaking of government, in terms of how he interrupted his discourse on Christian personal interactions. When pondering his view of proper government, we should also return to Romans 6:15-23, which has been called the "Slaves to Righteousness" passage. Verses 18 to 20 are the heart of it, in the NIV: "You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness. I am using an example from everyday life because of your human limitations. Just as you used to offer yourselves as slaves to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer yourselves as slaves to righteousness leading to holiness. When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness." The KJV has the same meaning although with the word "servant": "Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness. I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh: for as ye have yielded your members servants to uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity; even so now yield your members servants to righteousness unto holiness. For when ye were the servants of sin, ye were free from righteousness." We find then that "freedom" is not uniformly a good in the mind of Paul, whom we consider to have been divinely inspired by God to write this passage. That word has been used to politically deceive for thousands of years, and never more than now in our modern democracies which use it to sell secular government to Christians in place of Christian government that fulfills the First Commandment by officially aligning with and officially promoting and defending the name of Jesus Christ. Non-aligned godless democracy is framed as "freedom to worship" so that the Christian can have a justification for falling in with his or her country's democratic tradition, but in practice the vast majority of citizens are more concerned with being free to sin and are therefore slaves to sin and free from righteousness per Paul's verse 6:20. Christianity is not something that a Christian should want his or her government to be "free of," because due to the follower nature of mankind this inevitably leads to an irreligious society where many more souls end up in hell and live every day before that in an earthly hell. By instead making ourselves rightly-mastered "servants" or "courtiers" or "soldiers" or even "slaves" — call this end goal of Paul's what you will — then we by submission to our King of Kings Jesus Christ and by abiding in his righteousness, through this giving up of our anti-Christian freedoms, we gain the Christian freedom from sin in our everyday lives. Before that when we are given salvation for our submission to Christ's demand of faith, we gain freedom from death. Thus at the end of Romans 6, we see the "Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good" of the last verse of Romans 12, only in Romans 6 expressed in paraphrased summary as: "Be not overcome of freedom from righteousness, but overcome freedom from righteousness with slavery to God." Paul uses forms of the Greek word "doulos" (slave or bondservant) throughout Romans 6, not to mention for himself in Romans 1:1, Galatians 1:10, Philippians 1:1, Titus 1:1, etc. Christianity and Christian living are not democratic concepts, but monarchical to their core, and therefore best implemented in earthly governments by monarchs who act as earthly sons of God. That is, Christianity needs monarchs who allow personal freedom of conscience to choose faith in Christ, but encourage it by the authority, order, and Christianity-promoting government actions and laws that lead to a nation full of loyal Christian servants instead of freedom-touting libertines. The common man's expression of democratic freedom usually rewards him with misery and destruction, but instead chaining one's self to the all-powerful God always leads to freedom from all such harm and instead rewards the Christian with "eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." That is our glorious verse 6:23 applied politically, and Romans 6 helps us further understand that Paul would support political effort to replace democracies which value nothing more so than "freedom to sin" while maintaining an official disregard for Christ's righteousness. In the United States, it is a matter of the First Amendment that guarantees no allegiance to God on the national level vs. the First Commandment which demands absolute allegiance to God on the national level. In Romans 12:23 to Romans 13:7, which Paul wrote as a continuous passage, he would see such a submission to national slavery to sin as a nation overcome by evil that needs the good of Christianity to make things right, and would have no problem with Constantine replacing Nero or with a modern Constantine replacing secular-democratic parliamentary monkeys.
The second half of Romans Chapter 13 is an admonition for the Gentile Christian audience not to revert back to the "darkness" of the pagan-centric vices in Romans Chapter 1, but to instead substitute a simple daily love for thy neighbor. They had already soared infinitely above the typical Jew by only accepting Jesus Christ, and per verse 9 even an enumeration of the Ten Commandments seems to be more legalism than is now needed for post-salvation piety. The Apostle mentions a few then stops himself to declare, "if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself" (Rm. 13:9). In the prior verse 8, Paul set this simplicity of reflecting Christ's love in social interactions as a full 100% replacement for any adherence to the Law of Moses or the many other laws of the Jews, by stating "he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law." Verse 10 reconfirms that "Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law." Nothing could possibly be more in conflict with the Jews' approach than this because 1) Per the Maccabean Era and ever since the Jews have used their laws, and their imagined place before God, as justification for instead hating their neighbors. That is, if those neighbors have not been Jews, or have been Jews who have not likewise hated their neighbors, then the Jewish Law has been used as the framework to justify shunning, mistreatment, or killing. Paul like Jesus instead tells them that loving one's neighbors is really all that matters as far as social laws. 2) The Jews have a mountain of laws that they have stringently striven for, and most of them are man-made, but even the Law of Moses itself has been shown in Scripture to be steep and complex beyond the realm of possible human fulfillment. Love by contrast seems easy, almost geared toward the abilities of children, and those who are least educated in the Jewish laws seem by Jesus' and Paul's measure to be the most likely to instead keep God's law.
