Paul was talking about mobs of supposed Christians who were giving Christians a bad name by going around causing trouble as in flash mobs of partying like the punks of today, carousing around, abusing the system, disregarding normal sane reasonable laws, no self control, using the liberty in Christ for doing such things.
“Paul was talking about mobs of supposed Christians who were giving Christians a bad name...”
The Epistles have their place. I think rendering unto caesar is a much better practice.
I suspect his prison warden or the Council of Nicea, who were government employees (Church and State were one in those days) either intentionally misinterpreted Paul or inserted that out of whole cloth.
Paul was clear and direct on about everything else he wrote. If that passage was really about people acting like punks, Paul would have said “stop acting like punks”. That governments are ordained of God is a far cry from that!
All things work for His Purposes. God uses evil governments many times in the Bible to punish Israel, and to force Christians to trust Him and His Church.
This is just one dumb redneck’s suspicion/interpretation of that passage and the issues arising from it.
Paul was talking about mobs of supposed Christians who were giving Christians a bad name by going around causing trouble as in flash mobs of partying like the punks of today, carousing around, abusing the system, disregarding normal sane reasonable laws, no self control, using the liberty in Christ for doing such things.
I look at Romans 13 the same way I look at the POW Code of Conduct. You’re expected to resist aiding the enemy but you should follow basic sanitation regulations.