We are to render obedience to the magistrate because of God's command to do so. But Dr. Sproul investigates two cases when we are to not obey our government: when commanded to do what God forbids and to forbid what God commands. An examination of the role of the Christian and taxes and their relation to how we should vote is presented.

Today we will continue with our study of Paul’s letter to the church at Rome, and we are still in chapter 13. I am going to begin at verse 5 and read through verse 10. I might be able to go beyond that, but you know my limitations do not normally let us go that far. So, let us look at Romans 13:5–10. I ask the congregation to stand for the reading of the Word of God:

Therefore you must be subject, not only because of wrath but also for conscience’ sake. For because of this you also pay taxes, for they are God’s ministers attending continually to this very thing. Render therefore to all their due: taxes to whom taxes are due, customs to whom customs, fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor.

Owe no one anything except to love one another, for he who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not bear false witness,” “You shall not covet,” and if there is any other commandment, are all summed up in this saying, namely, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no harm to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.

This is the Word of God for God’s people. Please be seated. Let us pray.

Again, O Lord, we would be instructed not by human wisdom, but by the revelation that comes to us from Your omniscience. As we direct our attention once again to this sacred text, we ask that You help us to understand it correctly and embrace it with our minds and our hearts. For we ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.

The Principle of Submission

In the beginning of chapter 13, we saw Paul’s critical teaching on the role of civil government, which is instituted by God. Here, we are told that the secular rulers of this world are God’s ministers. Last time, I tried to draw applications of this text to questions of civil obedience, as well as questions of capital punishment and just warfare, since this text is the classical locus in which God gives to the civil magistrate the power of the sword.

Having looked at that section, we are warned that the civil magistrate does not bear the sword in vain and that he is not to be an enemy to good works but an enemy to evil. We also learn that we ought to have a healthy fear of civil authority, but not simply out of fear of punishment. Now, the Apostle forges ahead: “Therefore you should be subject, not only because of wrath”—not simply because you are afraid of the law enforcement agencies of your nation—“but also for conscience’ sake.”

Let me pause on that. Paul is saying that it is our responsibility to bend over backwards to be submissive to the civil magistrates, even when those magistrates are oppressive, even if we disagree radically with them. Nevertheless, we render obedience to those magistrates as a matter of conscience because our consciences are to be held captive by the Word of God. If God Himself has authorized these rulers and placed them over us, then unless they require us to do something God forbids or forbid us from doing something God commands, we are to render obedience. We are to do this not out of fear of their power, but out of conscience’ sake, as a matter of principle.

Have I just made a statement that needs to be translated into another language to be understood by contemporary congregations? When was the last time you heard anyone tell you that you have to live by principle? This is the heart of Christian ethics and life, that we are to live by conscience as people of principle, not out of expediency, not doing willy-nilly whatever our hearts desire. We are to be, in the main, submissive people, submissive ultimately to the law of God and to every authority He places over us.

Pay Your Taxes

Paul turns his attention to the question of the payment of taxes. This is one of my favorite issues. “For because of this”—that is, because of conscience—“you also pay taxes, for they are God’s ministers attending continually to this very thing. Render therefore to all their due: taxes to whom taxes are due, customs to whom customs, fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor.”

I admire the Apostle Paul for his faithfulness to Christ and his courage to tell the people of God to do their duty, even when that duty was something they absolutely despised. Keep in mind that the Roman government, in its taxation and tribute policies, was indeed an oppressive government. The people who received this admonition from the Apostle Paul had been oppressed and crushed by the burden of Roman taxation.

Paul says, “Pay your taxes.” They might be unfair. They might be oppressive. They might be unjust. But remember that God gives the civil magistrate the right to levy taxes because his reign and rule have to be financed. Since governments usually do not produce anything, most, if not all of their revenue is dependent not upon the voluntary contributions of the constituents of their nations but upon the imposition of taxes.

Taxation is also exercised and enforced by the sword, which we discussed last time. In the United States, if we refuse to pay our taxes, we do not have to worry about the government coming after us with a sword. Their weapons are a little more advanced than that. In any case, every government in every society throughout history has been involved in some form of levying taxes. It is the government’s right to levy taxes, and it is our responsibility to pay those taxes.

Righteous Taxation

Let me add something here: Any government to whom God gives the right to levy taxes also receives the responsibility to levy taxes that are just and righteous. I do not know if there has ever been a civil government in history that has maintained a righteous system of taxation for any period of time.

If you go to the pages of the Old Testament, you will see that one of the things God is passionate about, of which He speaks to His people through the prophets, is the oppression brought upon the poor by the rich. But the rich who are referred to, those who are “selling the poor for a pair of shoes,” as Amos complains, were not the merchants of Israel but the rulers of the nation. It was the kings and the princes who were using their power to extort burdensome payments from the poor.

We remember the incident of eminent domain exercised by Ahab when he confiscated Naboth’s vineyard. Here was a man who had labored strenuously to produce his vineyard. The king saw that it was a productive operation, so he nationalized it by taking it for his own possession. God’s wrath was poured out against that exercise of eminent domain.

Throughout the pages of the Old Testament, we see unjust, unrighteous, and oppressive burdens of taxation given to the people. We are witnesses of the biblical testimony of the Old Testament that God hates that, whether it is done by a Jewish king, a Babylonian king, a Roman emperor, or the Congress of the United States of America—it does not matter which civil magistrate. Every magistrate is called to levy taxes in a just and righteous manner.

Throughout church history, and throughout the history of Western civilization, we have seen many different forms of government. We have seen autocratic governments, where authority and power are vested in one person, a tyrant or dictator. We have seen oligarchies, where the power and authority are vested in a few people, and monarchies, where a king or queen exercises authority over the subjects. We have seen democracies, where authority and power are vested in the people, and where the ultimate authority lies in the majority whose rulers represent them.

Of the various types of government that I have mentioned, which one is ours? Are we in an autocracy? That is not a rhetorical question, I am asking you. Are we in an autocracy? No. Are we in a monarchy? No. Are we in an oligarchy? No. Are we in a democracy? No. Who said yes? The fathers of this nation went to great pains to make sure that the structure of government in this nation was not a democracy but a republic. What is the difference?

In a democracy, rule is vested in the people, the majority. In a republic, ultimate authority rests in the law. The whole purpose of the Bill of Rights is to guard against what Alexis de Tocqueville warned would destroy the American experiment, that is, the tyranny of the majority. The point of the Bill of Rights is that even if everyone in the country except one person agrees to stamp out free speech, the First Amendment rules over that majority. The private rights of individuals are guaranteed by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights to protect against tyranny of the majority.

I think the founders of this country were very farsighted. In my opinion, they were not farsighted enough. The one thing they failed to protect was the individual’s rights against unjust taxation. What I mean by unjust taxation is taxation through a progressive, unequal tax system. When God placed His tax upon the people of Israel, He imposed a tithe. Not everyone paid the same amount. The rich people paid a whole lot more than the poor people, but everyone paid the same percentage.

It is not so in our country. In our country we have politicized economics. We do not have a flat percentage system, but some people are required to pay a higher percentage than others. Do you know what we call that? We call it social justice, when in fact, it is manifest injustice. What is so evil and destructive about it is that it gives people the right to vote to impose taxes on other people that will not be imposed on themselves.

That is what I mean when I talk about the politicization of economics. It creates the politics of envy, where one group is set against another. Any time that has happened in history, it has ended in the destruction of the nation. It will end in the destruction of our nation if we do not do something about it.

Support Justice

However, I am not here simply to critique the American taxation system; I just wish all we had to pay taxes on was tea. But again, when I vote, I need to vote according to principle. I ought not to use the power of the ballot to pick your pocket.

Let me give a simple illustration. Let’s say we have three men in the room, and we all decide we ought to have a nice public park here in Sanford, and it will cost $100,000 for this little park. So, we decide to vote on the allocation of cost, and I make a suggestion: “I’ll pay $1,000.” I say to my buddy, “You pay $1,000 and this fellow over here, we’re going to vote that he pays $98,000.” How do you like that? This is for the public good, a park for everybody’s benefit. I am going to pay $1,000. My buddy is going to pay $1,000. This other guy is going to pay $98,000. I say, “All in favor, say ‘aye.’” I say aye, and my friend says aye. The other guy says nay, and we say, “You lose.” That is what happens when we have the right to exercise a tyranny of the majority.

Christians ought never to be involved in that sort of injustice, ever. We ought to be involved with the paying of our taxes as a matter of conscience, and yet at the same time be scrupulous in supporting righteousness and justice in whatever system we are engaged in.

Give What Is Due

The idea of justice is deeply embedded in this text. Paul tells us, “Render therefore to all their due: taxes to whom taxes are due, customs to whom customs, fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor.” There is a little word in this portion of the text that—I have to be honest with you—jumps right off the page to me when I read it. Yet, I am aware that unless people are rooted and grounded in the history of Western philosophy, they would probably read this text a thousand times and never have that word jump out at them the way it jumps out at me.

Some of you may remember Mortimer Adler, who was an important philosopher in twentieth-century America. Professor Adler published a book on the great ideas of Western civilization—ideas like truth, wisdom, and justice. These are concepts that we read about in the newspaper and words that we use in our vocabulary every day. Yet, he said, if we were put to the test, we would be hard-pressed to render an adequate definition of those terms.

One of the responsibilities I had when I was teaching seminary was that, in addition to Christian theology, I was given the responsibility to teach Christian ethics. One of the things I would do as an exercise with my students was give them a pop quiz, which they all loved. I would say, “I want you to take out a piece of paper and write a succinct, concise, accurate definition of justice.” They looked at me in a way similar to the way the congregation is looking at me right now, although you also have a look of delight that you are not being given the same test.

You might think a term like justice would be easy to define. Most of the answers were based upon some concept of merit, that justice involved rewarding goodness according to its merit and punishing wickedness according to its demerit. This merit structure, which many of us conceive of as the heart of justice, is what I would get from the students until I asked them this question.

Let’s say you have a beauty contest. You build this contest as an opportunity for contestants to vie for the crown of Miss America or Miss Sanford, and the qualities by which the winner will be judged will be, principally, physical beauty. There may be some room for congeniality and talent, but the main criterion by which the winner will be judged will be her beauty. Then the judges come to the contest. They see that an ugly duckling has entered the contest, and they feel sorry for her. So, they decide to vote for her to be Miss Sanford or Miss Florida. My question is this: Is that just?

If we use a merit system, we would say that the decision for this person to be voted the winner of the contest had nothing to do with merit, nothing to do with good behavior. The woman was not crowned Miss Sanford because she deserved it through her moral uprightness. So, the question of justice may be irrelevant, unless we use the definition of justice that was offered to the Western world by Aristotle. He said that the principle of justice, in its simplest explanation, is this: It is giving to people what is their due.

If you advertise a contest where the prize will be awarded on the basis of beauty, who is due the victory? The one who is most beautiful. That person is due the reward. Even though there is no merit or virtue in being beautiful, nevertheless, the terms of the contest were defined by an aesthetic criterion. Whoever meets that criterion in its greatest dimension is due the prize.

Are you following what I am saying here? If this definition is correct, then righteousness and justice have much to do with the question of due-ness. Let me give an illustration that may trouble some of you. I hope you will just sit with it and think about it.

Truth Where It Is Due

One of the great ethical debates we face in Christian ethics is the question of the sanctity of truth. The question is this: “Are we always, in every circumstance, obligated to give the unvarnished truth?” There are many Christian ethicists who answer that question in the affirmative and say that yes, righteousness demands that we always tell the truth with no exceptions. But then we go to the biblical example of Rahab, who lied to protect Joshua and his people and who makes the roll call of the saints in the New Testament for her valorous action.

Even better, we can look at the midwives of Egypt, who were instructed by the edict of Pharaoh to call the guards as soon as they knew that a Hebrew woman was about to give birth. This was so that the edict to destroy the firstborn male would be carried out. The midwives disobeyed, and to protect these newborn babies, they lied to the soldiers, saying that the women were quick to give birth. The midwives practiced deceit to the authorities to save the lives of the babies, and we are told in the text that God blessed them because of it. So, many students of ethics say that there is a place for the righteous lie. There is a place for the just telling of a lie.

I once told the story of the landlady I had in Holland, who hollowed out a place under her living room floor. She had provisions in there, a fan, water, and other things to hide her teenage son and the boy next door from the Gestapo. The Gestapo would come in unannounced, looking for youngsters of that age to ship them off to labor camps in Germany for the war effort.

One day, she heard the soldiers coming and quickly put the two young men underneath the floor and hid them. The guards came in and said, “Are there any young men here?” What was her moral obligation? “Oh yes, I have two of them hidden underneath the floor.” No. The principle of giving truth to whom it is due, giving truth where righteousness and justice require it, would not only allow that woman to deceive those soldiers but require her to do it.

Does that make sense to you? In other words, when we talk about truth, the biblical principle is this: We should always tell the truth where righteousness and justice require it. But righteousness and justice do not always require it, as in the cases of warfare that I have just mentioned. The principle that is used here, that defines justice and righteousness, is the principle of “that which is due.” That which is owed, that which is obligatory.

Paul is saying that we are obliged to pay our taxes. We must give the state what is due to the state. Justice and righteousness require that we submit to their taxes. That is what Paul is saying here when he says, “Render to all their due: taxes to whom taxes are due, customs to whom customs are due, fear to whom fear is due, honor to whom honor is due.”

Honor Is Due the King

Honor is due the king. Even if the king is not honorable, he is to be honored. It is his due. We are to honor our father and mother, because honor is due to our parents. They may not deserve it. They may not have earned it. They may have not merited it. That is why we cannot reduce Christian justice and righteousness to the simple formula of merit and demerit. They may not earn it at all. But by God’s decree, it is their due, and I am to give honor to whom honor is due.

I have told the story at least on one occasion about when my friend, John Guest, came to the United States for the first time. He had been in this country for less than two weeks when I first met him and had dinner with him. He told me, as an aspiring evangelist in the United States, that he was not sure if he was going to be able to communicate the gospel in America.

I asked: “Why? What’s the problem?” John answered: “Last week, I was visiting the antique stores in Germantown in Philadelphia, and I was going to stores that specialized in Revolutionary War memorabilia. I walked in one such store and I saw these placards on the wall. They read, ‘Don’t tread on me. No taxation without representation.’ But the next one really arrested my attention. It said, in bold letters, ‘We serve no sovereign here.’ Is that really the American mentality? How in the world can I preach the gospel of the kingdom of God to a people who have a built-in antipathy and allergy towards sovereignty?” We do not have a king. We have not been trained to give honor and respect to those in authority over us.

I also told the story, on another occasion, of when I was in graduate school. The professor would come in after the students were assembled in the amphitheater. There was a podium in the front of the amphitheater, and the professor would walk to that podium, step up, and face the students. As soon as he came into the room, that was a silent signal for every student to stand up. Then he would nod and give us the signal to be seated. We sat down. Then, the professor would deliver his lecture with no interruption. God forbid that any student would raise their hand with a question. When he was finished, he would close his book, step off the podium, and everybody would stand up again. He would go out of the room, and that was it.

Not only did I experience that in the classroom, but when I went to church for the first time in Holland, and the minister came in from the side, everybody in the congregation stood up as soon as he appeared. When he nodded, they all sat down. When he finished his sermon, everybody stood up. He nodded, walked out, and that was it. He did not shake your hand at the back of the church or anything like that.

One day, it was very warm in the classroom in Amsterdam. Of course, you would not go to class without a coat and tie. I had my coat and tie on, but it was very warm, so I took my coat off and put it on the chair next to me. I was way up in the back of the amphitheater.

In the middle of his lecture, my professor, Dr. Berkouwer, stopped. He looked up at me and said, “Would the American please put his coat back on.” He did not know me at all, but he knew that the only kind of person that would dare to take off their coat in the middle of his lecture had to be an American. We are so casual, so cavalier. So foreign is the concept of honor to our culture.

Yet the biblical culture of ethics is built on honor. Giving honor where honor is due—to your boss, to your parents, to the civil magistrates, and, yes, to your pastor.

Owe No One Anything

Let us go on. Verse 8 says, “Owe no one anything except to love one another, for he who loves another has fulfilled the law.” What follows is an exposition of the ways in which love fulfills the law. I will treat that, God willing, next time. But let me look at the first part of the sentence, because, I am afraid, this is a passage that has been widely misused in the church and in our days.

Many people come to verse 8, “Owe no man anything but to love him,” and see that as a biblical mandate against incurring debt. We are told that it is unchristian to borrow money in order to build churches, to build homes, to buy automobiles, and so on based upon this text, “Owe no one anything except to love one another.” That would seem to indicate that we ought never to incur any kind of indebtedness.

If you look at the scope of sacred Scripture, you will see that there are vast provisions for taking on debt and guidelines to protect people who are in debt. In the first instance, there are strong prohibitions against oppressive usury. What is usury? It refers to an exploitatively high interest rate that takes advantage of people.

If our culture were exposed to the law of Israel, the level of interest rates that are routinely charged by credit card companies would clearly be seen as usurious and would come under the judgment of God. They are too high, and they exploit people in their weaknesses. We see that principle in the Scriptures with respect to lending and rates of interest.

We also see strong considerations for the poor who give, as collateral for their indebtedness, their personal garments. We read the mandate that if a person puts up as collateral his garment, which he needs to keep warm at night, the creditor may keep the garment during the day but is required by biblical law to give it back for the coldness of the evening. If you look at all those different scenarios, you will see that they are all based on a culture ordained by God that allowed borrowing and lending as long as it was not exploitative and oppressive.

Is that all dismissed when Paul says, “Owe no one anything but to love one another”? There may have been commentators in the history of the church who have taken the meaning of verse 8 to be that it prohibits incurring debt of any kind. Like I said, there may have been commentators in church history who have interpreted this text in that manner. I am just not aware of them. I do not know of any who have done that.

Any commentator I have ever consulted on this portion of the text says that the basic point the Apostle is making is that we operate under only one perpetual debt or obligation, and that is to love our brothers. What Paul is saying here about not owing anything except love has an application towards borrowing and lending. The point of the text, in the structure in which it was written, is this: If you borrow money, and you owe it, there is no sin in that. The sin comes when? When you do not pay it back, when you do not fulfill your obligation.

Fulfill Your Obligations

I wish you could spend a day in the accounting room at Ligonier Ministries. You would see how many people order products, receive their invoices, and never pay them. It is epidemic. People are taking advantage of loans and then not fulfilling their obligation. It does not just happen at our ministry. It happens at every ministry in America and in the world. It happens in every department store.

Christians, of all people, when they incur debt, must, as a matter of principle and conscience, move heaven and earth to honor their obligations. If you owe somebody something, dear friends, pay what you owe. Pay your bills. Pay them on time. If you enter into a contract, fulfill the terms of the contract. That is not difficult. That is basic integrity as far as our duty to live in righteousness.

This is connected to what the Apostle just said. Render taxes to whom taxes are due, customs to whom customs are due, fear to whom fear is due, honor to whom honor is due, and payment to whom payment is due. It is fundamental. It is now wrapped—as we will see, God willing, next time—in the overarching principle of love.

If I borrow from you, if you live next door to me and I borrow your rake and do not return it, I am not loving you; I am using you. All these practical applications of righteousness and justice that Paul is explaining here are rooted and grounded in the overarching responsibility we have to love our neighbor as ourselves. These are nothing more and nothing less than practical applications of the Golden Rule. We will explore that in greater detail next time. Let us pray.

Father, give to Your people sensitive consciences that we might understand what the principles of righteousness and justice entail. Give us the moral strength to do it, to render what is due to all people—honor, fear, taxes, customs, payment, and most of all, that as a matter of conscience we would exercise love to our neighbors. For we ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.

This transcript has been lightly edited for readability.