Homily 23 — Romans 13, verses 1 to 10

“Let every soul be subject to the higher authorities.” [a]

He makes a great deal of this subject in his other letters too, placing subjects under their rulers as household servants are placed under their masters.

He does this to show that Christ did not bring in his laws to overturn the life of the state, but to set it in better order, and to teach people not to take up needless and useless wars. The plots formed against us for the truth’s sake are enough; we have no need to add further trials that are needless and useless.

And notice how well timed his taking up this subject is. He had called for that great-hearted courage, and made them fit to deal with friends and enemies alike. He had made them useful to those who do well and to those in trouble and need, in fact to everyone. He had planted a way of life worthy of angels, gotten rid of anger, brought recklessness down, and in every way made their minds level. Only then does he bring in his exhortation on these matters as well. For if it is right to repay those who wrong us with the opposite, it is far more our duty to obey those who do us good. But he states this reasoning toward the end of his exhortation. For now he does not bring in the arguments I have just mentioned, but only those that require us to do this as a debt.

And to show that these rules are for everyone — even for priests and monks, and not only for those living in the world — he made this plain at the very start by saying, “Let every soul be subject to the higher authorities.” This holds even if you are an apostle, or an evangelist, or a prophet, or anything whatever, since this submission does not overthrow religion. And he does not merely say “obey,” but “be subject.” The first claim such a law has on us, and the reasoning suited to the faithful, is that all this is God’s appointment.

“For there is no authority,” he says, “except from God.” Someone may say: “What are you saying? Is every ruler, then, chosen by God?” He answers: “That is not what I am saying. Nor am I speaking now about individual rulers, but about the thing itself. That there should be rulers, that some should rule and others be ruled, and that everything should not simply be carried along in one confusion, with the people swaying like waves this way and that — this, I say, is the work of God’s wisdom.” [d]

That is why he does not say, “For there is no ruler except from God.” It is the thing itself he speaks of, when he says, “There is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God.” In the same way, when a certain wise man says, “It is by the Lord that a man is matched with a woman” (Proverbs 19, verse 14, in the Greek Old Testament), he means that God made marriage, and not that it is God who joins every man who comes together with a woman. We see many who come together for evil, even under the law of marriage, and we should not put that down to God. But as he himself said, “He who made them at the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave father and mother and cling to his wife, and the two will be one flesh’” (Matthew 19, verses 4 and 5; Genesis 2, verse 24). And this is what that wise man meant to explain.

Since equality of rank often leads to fighting, God has made many kinds of rule and submission: that of husband and wife, for instance, of son and father, of old and young, of slave and free, of ruler and ruled, of teacher and disciple. And why are you surprised at this among human beings, when he has done the same thing even in the body? There too he has not made all the parts equal in honor. He made one lesser and another greater, and some of the limbs to rule and some to be ruled. Among the creatures without reason you can see the same principle: among bees, among cranes, among herds of wild cattle. Even the sea itself is not without this good order. There too many tribes of fish are ranged under one leader, and are led like an army, and make long journeys far from home. For the lack of any rule, wherever it is found, is an evil and a cause of confusion.

Having said, then, where governments come from, he goes on: “Whoever therefore resists the authority resists what God has appointed.” See where he has brought the subject, how fearful he makes it, and how he shows this to be a matter of debt. The believers might have said: “You are making us very cheap and contemptible, putting us, who are to enjoy the kingdom of heaven, in subjection to rulers.” So that they would not say this, he shows that in doing this he is making them subject not to rulers but, once again, to God. For the one who submits to the authorities is obeying God. Yet he does not put it that way — that the one who listens to the authorities is obeying God. Instead he uses the opposite case to put fear into them, and states it more sharply: the one who does not listen to them is fighting against God, who framed these laws. And in every case he takes pains to show that we obey them not as a favor but as a debt. In this way he was more likely to draw the unbelieving governors to religion, and the believers to obedience.

For in those days there was a widespread rumor slandering the apostles as guilty of sedition and of plotting revolution, as if everything they did and said aimed at overturning the established order. So when you show our common Master giving this command to all his people, you will at once silence those who slander us as revolutionaries, and you will speak up for the teachings of the truth with great boldness. He says: “Do not be ashamed, then, of such submission. God has laid down this law, and he is a strong avenger of it if it is despised. It is no ordinary punishment he will exact from you if you disobey, but the very greatest. Nothing you can say against it will get you off. You will suffer the harshest penalty at the hands of men, with no one to defend you, and you will provoke God all the more.”

All this he hints at when he says, “And those who resist will receive condemnation on themselves.” Then, after the fear, to show what is gained by the thing, he also uses reasons to persuade them, as follows:

Verse 3: “For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to evil.” [g]

Once he has dealt them a deep wound and struck them down, he again treats them more gently, like a wise physician who applies soothing medicines. He comforts them and says: “Why be afraid? Why shudder? Does the ruler punish someone who is doing well? Is he frightening to someone who lives practicing virtue?” That is why he goes on: “Do you want, then, not to be afraid of the authority? Do what is good, and you will have praise from it.” You see how he has made him a friend of the ruler, by showing that the ruler even praises him from his throne. You see how he has emptied the ruler’s wrath of all its meaning.

Verse 4: “For he is God’s servant to you for good.” He says: “So far from frightening you, he even praises you; so far from standing in your way, he even works with you. When you have his praise and his help, how can you not be subject to him?”

He makes virtue easier for you in other ways too: by punishing the wicked, by rewarding and honoring the good, and by working together with the will of God. That is why Paul has even given him the name “servant.” Consider this. I advise you to be self-controlled, and he says the same thing through the laws. I urge you not to be grasping and greedy, and he sits in judgment on such cases. So he is a fellow worker with us and a helper to us, and he has been commissioned by God for this very purpose. So there are two reasons to respect him: because he was commissioned by God, and because it was for such a purpose. “But if you do what is evil, be afraid.” It is not the ruler, then, who causes the fear, but our own wickedness.

“For he does not bear the sword in vain.” You see how he has armed him and posted him on guard like a soldier, to strike fear into those who sin. “For he is God’s servant, an avenger to carry out wrath on the one who does evil.” But so that you will not recoil at hearing again of punishment and vengeance and a sword, he says once more that it is God’s law the ruler is carrying out. What if he does not know it himself? Still, it is God who has shaped things so. If, then, whether he punishes or honors, he is a servant — avenging virtue’s cause and driving vice away, as God wills — why be quarrelsome toward him, when he is the cause of so much good, and even prepares the way for your own good deeds? For there are many who first practiced virtue through the fear of God. [h]

There is a duller sort of people, on whom things to come have less hold than things present. So the one who by fear and by rewards prepares the souls of most people, and makes them more fit for the word of teaching, is rightly called “God’s servant.”

Verse 5: “Therefore you must be subject, not only because of wrath but also for conscience’ sake.” [i]

What does “not only because of wrath” mean? It means: not only because by refusing to be subject you resist God, nor only because you bring great evils on yourself from God and from the rulers, but also because the ruler is your benefactor in matters of the greatest importance. He secures peace for you, and the blessings of ordered civic life. Countless blessings come to cities through these authorities. If you took them away, everything would go to ruin. Neither city nor countryside, neither private nor public buildings, nor anything else would stand; the whole world would be turned upside down, with the stronger devouring the weaker. So even if no wrath followed disobedience, you ought to be subject on this ground alone, so as not to seem to have no conscience and no feeling toward your benefactor.

Verse 6: “For this reason you also pay tribute; for they are God’s servants, attending continually to this very thing.”

He does not go one by one through the benefits the rulers bring to cities — good order and peace, and the other services, such as those of the soldiers and of the officials in charge of public business. He shows the whole of it by a single case. You yourself bear witness that you gain from him, he means, by paying him a wage. Notice the wisdom and good judgment of the blessed Paul. The very thing that seemed burdensome and irritating — the system of taxes — he turns into proof of the rulers’ care for people.

What is the reason, he means, that we pay tribute to a king? Is it not because he provides for us? And we would not have paid it unless we had understood from the start that we gained from his oversight. It was for this reason that from ancient times everyone agreed that governors should be supported by us: they neglect their own affairs to take charge of the public ones, and spend all their free time on this, and by this our goods too are kept safe.

Having said, then, what the outward benefits are, he returns again to his earlier line of argument (for in this way he was more likely to win the believer over). He shows once more that this is God’s decree, and on this he finally rests his advice, in these words: “they are God’s servants.” Then, to show the pains they take and how hard their life is, he goes on: “attending continually to this very thing.” [j]

This is their life, this their business: that you may enjoy peace.

That is why, in another letter, he tells them not only to be subject but also to “pray” for them. And to show there too that the benefit is shared by all, he adds, “that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all things” (First Timothy 2, verses 1 and 2). For they contribute in no small way to the settled state of this present life: they keep guard, drive off enemies, check those in the cities who are bent on sedition, and put an end to quarrels among anyone at all. Do not tell me about someone who misuses the office. Look at the good order in the institution itself, and you will see the great wisdom of the one who made this law from the first.

Verses 7 and 8: “Render therefore to all what is due: tribute to whom tribute is due, customs to whom customs, fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor. Owe no one anything, except to love one another.” [k]

He still keeps to the same line, telling them to pay the rulers not money only, but honor and fear. But how is it that after saying above, “Do you want not to be afraid of the authority? Do what is good,” he says here, “Render fear”? He says it meaning the highest honor, not the fear that comes from a bad conscience, which he spoke of before. And he does not say “give” but “render,” that is, “give back,” and then adds “what is due.” For you are not doing anyone a favor by this; the thing is a debt. And if you do not do it, you will be punished as stubborn.

Do not suppose that you are lowering yourself, and taking away from the dignity of your own philosophy, if you stand up when a ruler comes in, or if you uncover your head. If Paul laid down these laws at that time, when the rulers were pagans, much more ought this to be done with them now that they are believers. And if you mean to say that you have been entrusted with greater privileges, understand that this is not your time. You are a stranger and a traveler passing through. A time will come when you will appear brighter than all. For now your “life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ appears, then you also will appear with him in glory” (Colossians 3, verses 3 and 4).

So do not look for your change in this life of chance. Even if you have to stand in fear in a ruler’s presence, do not think this beneath your noble birth. For God wills it so: that the ruler, whose place he has marked out, should have his own authority. And when someone who knows of no wrong in himself stands in fear before the judge, the one who does wrong will be all the more alarmed; and in this way you will be the more respected. Lowering yourself does not come from honoring the ruler, but from dishonoring him. And the ruler will treat you with greater respect, and because of this he will glorify your Master, even if he is an unbeliever. [z]

“Owe no one anything, except to love one another.” Again he turns to the mother of good deeds, the teacher of all that has been said, which also produces every virtue, and says that this too is a debt — not, however, like the tribute or the customs, but a continuing one. He does not want it ever to be paid off. Or rather, he wants it always being paid, yet never paid in full, but always owed. For that is the nature of this debt: one keeps paying and keeps owing, always. Having said, then, how one ought to love, he also shows what is gained by it: “For the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.”

And please do not think even this a favor, for this too is a debt. You owe love to your brother because of your spiritual kinship. And not for this reason only, but also because “we are members of one another.” If love leaves us, the whole body is torn to pieces. So love your brother. If from his friendship you gain so much as to fulfill the whole law, you owe him love as one who has been benefited by him. [m]

Verse 9: “For this — ‘You shall not commit adultery, You shall not kill, You shall not steal, You shall not bear false witness,’ and any other commandment — is summed up in this saying: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”

He does not say merely that it is fulfilled, but that it “is summed up”; that is, the whole work of the commandments is completed briefly, in a few words. For love is the beginning and the end of virtue. Virtue has love for its root, love for its foundation, love for its summit. If, then, love is both beginning and fulfillment, what is there equal to it? But he does not ask for love merely, but for intense love. For he does not say merely, “Love your neighbor,” but “as yourself.” That is why Christ too said that “the Law and the Prophets hang” on it.

And see how highly he raised this love when he set out the two kinds of love! After saying that the first commandment is “You shall love the Lord your God,” he added a second. And he did not stop there, but added, “like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” What could equal this love for humankind, this gentleness? When we were infinitely far from him, he sets love toward us side by side with love toward himself, and says it “is like” it. So, to make the measures of the two nearly the same, of the one he says, “with all your heart and with all your soul,” and of love toward one’s neighbor he says, “as yourself.” And Paul said that when this love is absent, even the other is of no great profit to us. When we are fond of someone, we say, “If you love him, then you love me.” In the same way Christ, to show this, says, “is like it”; and to Peter, “If you love me, feed my sheep” (John 21, verse 16).

Verse 10: “Love does no harm to its neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.” [n]

See how love has both parts of virtue: keeping away from evil (for it “does no harm,” he says) and doing good. “For it is,” he says, “the fulfilling of the law.” It does not only set before us, in brief, instruction in how to live; it also makes doing it easy. Its concern was not only that we should come to know what is good for us — that is the law’s concern. It also gave us great help toward doing it, completing in us not some part of the commandments, but the whole sum of virtue.

So let us love one another, since in this way we will also love God, who loves us. Among people, if you love someone’s beloved, the one who loves that person resents it. But here God counts you worthy to share his love, and hates you when you do not share it. Human love is loaded with envy and grudging, but God’s love is free of every passion, and that is why he looks for people to share his love. For he says: “Love along with me, and then I will love you all the more.” You see the words of a passionate lover! “If you love my beloved, then I will count myself greatly loved by you.”

For he longs intensely for our salvation, and he showed this from of old. Listen to what he says when he was forming the man: “Let us make man in our image”; and again, “Let us make a helper suited to him. It is not good for him to be alone” (Genesis 1, verse 26). And when the man had sinned, God rebuked him — and see how gently! He does not say, “You wretch, you utter wretch! After receiving such great benefits, have you trusted the devil after all? Have you left your Benefactor to side with the evil spirit?” What does he say instead? “Who told you that you were naked, unless you have eaten from the tree from which alone I commanded you not to eat?” (Genesis 3, verse 11). It is as if a father were to say to a child who had been told not to touch a sword, and then disobeyed and was cut, “How did you get hurt? You got hurt by not listening to me.” You see that these are the words of a friend rather than a master — of a friend despised, and not deserting even then. So let us imitate him, and when we rebuke, let us keep this same moderation.

He rebukes the woman too with the same gentleness. Or rather, what he said was not so much rebuke as warning and correction, and a safeguard for the future. That is why he says nothing to the serpent. The serpent had designed the mischief, and had no one else he could shift the blame onto, so God punished him severely. And even here he did not stop, but made the earth share in the curse as well. And if he drove them out of paradise and sentenced them to labor, even for this we ought to worship and revere him most of all. Since easy living ends in listlessness, he cuts into our pleasure, building a fort of pain against listlessness, so that we may come back to loving him. [p]

And what of Cain? Does he not meet with the same gentleness? Though Cain too had insulted him, God does not reproach him in return, but pleads with him and says, “Why is your face fallen?” (Genesis 4, verse 6). And yet what Cain had done allowed no excuse whatever, as his younger brother shows. Still, even then God does not rebuke him. What does he say? “Have you sinned? Keep the peace.” “Do not do it again.” “His turning will be toward you, and you will rule over him” (Genesis 4, verse 7, in the Greek Old Testament) — meaning his brother. He means: “If you are afraid that because of this sacrifice I will take from you the privileges of the firstborn, take heart: I put full command over him into your hands. Only be a better man, and love the one who has done you no wrong, for I care about you both. And what makes me gladdest is that you should not be at odds with one another.”

Like a devoted mother, God does and plans everything to keep one from being torn from the other. To see my meaning more clearly by an example, please call to mind Rebekah in her distress, running about everywhere when the elder son was at enmity with the younger. She loved Jacob, yet she had not turned against Esau. That is why she said, “Otherwise I may be robbed of you both, my children, in one day” (Genesis 27, verse 45). And that is why God said on that occasion, “You have sinned; be at peace. His turning will be toward you” (Genesis 4, verse 7): he was heading off the murder in advance, and aiming at peace for them both. And when Cain had murdered him, even then God did not bring his care for him to an end, but again answers the man who had killed his brother in gentle words: “Where is your brother Abel?” — so that even now, if he would, he might make a full confession. But Cain fought on in defense of his earlier wrongdoing, with a greater and sadder shamelessness.

But even then God does not leave him. Again he speaks the language of a wronged and despised lover, and says, “The voice of your brother’s blood cries out to me” (Genesis 4, verse 10). And again he rebukes the earth along with the murderer, turning his anger aside onto it and saying, “Cursed is the earth, which opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood” (Genesis 4, verse 11). He does as mourners do when they call out to the dead, as David also did when Saul had fallen. David addressed the mountains that received Saul as he died, in these words: “You mountains of Gilboa, let neither rain nor dew fall on you, for there the shields of the mighty were thrown away” (Second Samuel 1, verse 21). In the same way God, as though singing a lament for a single voice, says, “The voice of your brother’s blood cries out to me; and now you are cursed from the earth, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand.” [t]

He said this to humble Cain’s fiery passion, and to persuade him to love his brother at least now that he was gone. He would say: “Have you put out his life? Why not put out your hatred too, now?” But what does he do? He loves both the one and the other, since he made them both. What then? Does he let the murderer go unpunished? No — Cain would only have grown worse. Will he punish him, then? No — he is more tender than a father. See, then, how he punishes and at the same time shows his love, even in this. Or rather, he does not so much punish as correct. He does not kill him, but only binds him with trembling, so that he may strip himself of the crime; so that at least in this way he may come back to a natural tenderness for his brother; and so that at last he may make peace with him now that he is gone. For God wanted him not to go away to the other world at enmity with the man who had died.

This is how those who love behave: when their acts of kindness meet with no love in return, they are driven to be harsh and to threaten — not willingly, but led on by their love to do it — so that at least in this way they may win over those who scorn them. This kind of affection is forced, and yet even this comforts them, so strong is their love. So punishment itself comes from affection, for if they were not pained at being hated, they would not choose to punish either. Notice that this is what Paul says to the Corinthians: “For who is it,” he says, “that makes me glad, but the one who is made sorry by me?” (Second Corinthians 2, verse 2). So when he goes to the full length of punishment, that is when he shows his love.

In this way the Egyptian woman too, out of her violent love, punished Joseph just as violently. She did it to do harm, because her love was unchaste; but God does it for good, because his love is worthy of the one who loves. That is why he does not refuse to stoop down even to more physical language, to use the names of human passions, and to call himself jealous. “I am a jealous God” (Exodus 20, verse 5), he says, so that you may learn how intense his love is. So let us love him as he wants us to, for he sets great store by it. If we turn away, he keeps inviting us; and if we will not turn back, he disciplines us out of affection, not from a wish to punish us. See what he says in Ezekiel to the city he loved, which had nevertheless despised him: “I will bring your lovers against you and hand you over to them, and they will stone you and kill you; and my jealousy will be taken away from you, and I will rest, and I will not trouble myself anymore” (from Ezekiel 16, verses 37 to 42).

What more than this could a passionate lover have said, when despised by his beloved and still, after everything, loving her ardently? For God does everything so that we will love him, and because of this he did not spare even his own Son. But we are unbending and savage. Yet let us become gentle at last, and love God as we ought to love him, so that we may enjoy virtue with pleasure. If a man who has a wife he loves does not even notice the vexations that come day by day, only think what great pleasure the one who loves with this divine and pure love will enjoy! This — yes, this — is the kingdom of heaven. This is the enjoyment of good things, and pleasure, and cheerfulness, and joy, and blessedness. Or rather, however many things I say, I will still not be able to give you a picture of it such as it deserves. Only the experience of it can give knowledge of this good thing. That is why the prophet says, “Delight yourself in the Lord” (Psalm 37, verse 4), and, “Taste and see that the Lord is gracious” (Psalm 34, verse 8). [y]

So let us be persuaded, and give ourselves over to delight in his love. In this way we will see his kingdom even from within this life, and will be living the life of angels. While we remain on earth we will be as well off as those who live in heaven; and after we depart from here we will stand, the brightest of all, before the judgment seat of Christ, and will enjoy that glory beyond words. May we all attain it, by the grace and love for humankind of our Lord Jesus Christ, for to him belongs the glory forever. Amen.