A Response to Russell Moore
In a recent essay, “Christians, Let’s Stop Abusing Romans 13,” Russell Moore urges Christians to reconsider how they invoke Romans 13 when the state uses coercive force. Writing in response to a fatal self-defense encounter involving an ICE agent, Moore cautions against using Romans 13 as a way of justifying state action or quieting moral unease. His concern is that the passage is often deployed reflexively, functioning less as biblical instruction than as a theological shield for power.
Stated narrowly and in isolation, that concern is not unreasonable. Romans 13 does not render the civil magistrate morally infallible, nor does it place state action beyond moral scrutiny. Scripture records rulers rebuked by prophets, resisted by apostles, and judged by God. No serious Christian political theology denies that civil authority is accountable to a higher law.
The problem is not whether Romans 13 can be abused, but how.
Moore’s argument assumes that the primary danger lies in Christians appealing to Romans 13 to defend actions associated with the state’s ordinary coercive responsibilities. In attempting to correct this perceived misuse, however, Moore introduces his own. He does so by failing to reckon with the positive, God-given role Romans 13 assigns to the civil magistrate, in a way that mirrors an earlier, opposite error—namely, his appeal to Romans 13 in favor of the government claiming authority over the church’s corporate gathering during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Moore’s Argument
Moore does not deny that civil authority is instituted by God, nor does he deny that the magistrate bears the sword in a real sense. He acknowledges that there are lawful and tragic necessities in a fallen world, including legitimate uses of force by law enforcement. He is also correct that Christians may ask whether an exercise of authority has been proportionate, just, and consistent with the moral law.
He is likewise correct to situate Romans 13 within its immediate literary context. Paul’s exhortation to submission follows Romans 12, where believers are commanded to renounce personal vengeance and overcome evil with good. Romans 13 does, in part, direct justice toward public authority. That context matters and must not be ignored.
If Moore’s essay stopped there, it would be largely unobjectionable. The difficulty arises from what follows.
For Moore, the danger of abuse appears chiefly when Christians cite Romans 13 in defense of coercive state action—particularly when that action involves law enforcement. In practice, this recasts Romans 13 less as a text that defines the magistrate’s vocation and more as a brake on Christian confidence in civil authority.
That move does more than caution against misuse. It subtly shifts the burden of justification. Coercive civil enforcement becomes presumptively suspect, while the magistrate’s divinely assigned task recedes into the background. The result is not a more careful application of Romans 13, but a confused one.
Where the Argument Fails
Romans 13 does not merely restrain Christian impulses toward vengeance. It positively defines the office and task of civil government. The governing authority is described as “God’s servant for your good,” one who “does not bear the sword in vain,” but who executes wrath on the wrongdoer. This language is not incidental. It establishes coercive enforcement of law as a divinely appointed function of civil government in a fallen world.
When Moore warns Christians away from citing Romans 13 when the state bears the sword, he implicitly reframes the magistrate’s task as something that must be justified against the passage rather than by it. The burden shifts, and the magistrate’s use of force is no longer understood as a lawful exercise of God-given authority subject to moral limits, but as a morally precarious act Christians should instinctively distrust.
It is important to note that Moore’s article was not written in a vacuum. The context in which Moore’s article appears is during a national debate about the execution of law, the validity of national borders, the restraint of unlawful interference, and the use of coercive force in response to resistance or threats of bodily harm. These are not edge cases for Romans 13. They are among the clearest examples of what it means for the magistrate to bear the sword. To suggest that appeals to Romans 13 in such contexts are presumptively abusive is to drain the passage of its positive content.
None of this denies that magistrates can act unjustly. Scripture is clear that rulers are accountable to God and subject to judgment (e.g., Ps. 2:10-12; Acts 5:29). But such accountability presupposes the ruler’s authority. Moral limits—rooted in God’s law and the natural order—do not negate vocation; they regulate it. When the magistrate enforces wholesome laws aimed at preserving order, protecting life, and restraining wrongdoing, he is not acting in spite of Romans 13, but in accordance with it. As the Second London Baptist Confession states in Chapter 24, the magistrate is instituted by God for these civil ends, not as an arbitrary power.
The Mirror-Image Error
The instability of Moore’s argument becomes clearer when set alongside his earlier appeals to Romans 13 during the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020, Moore invoked Romans 13 to argue that churches were morally obligated to comply with civil orders suspending corporate worship. Resistance to such orders was portrayed as irresponsible and even as disobedience to Scripture itself.
That appeal required granting the civil magistrate jurisdiction that Scripture does not give. The gathered worship of the church—its assembly, ordinances, and governance—is not a civil activity licensed by the state. It is a divine institution governed by Christ through His Word.
Here, the Second London Baptist Confession is unambiguous. Chapter 26.7 affirms that Christ has given the church all authority necessary for worship and discipline. The final sentence of Chapter 1.6 clarifies that while some circumstances in the church may be ordered by the light of nature and Christian prudence, they must be ordered according to the general rules of the Word. Prudence assists obedience; it does not redefine it.
Likewise, the magistrate’s task has a defined scope: to enforce the law, punish evildoers, and protect the common good. He does not govern Christ’s church, regulate worship, or administer Word and sacrament. The Confession reflects this ordering with clarity. Chapter 24 affirms the civil magistrate for civil ends. Chapter 26.7 assigns the church’s worship and discipline to Christ’s authority.
A properly ordered political theology does not begin with either reflexive suspicion or blind trust as emotional postures. It begins with understanding the God-given vocation of the civil magistrate. The magistrate is judged by whether he acts within the bounds of his God-given office. Where acts accord with that vocation, Christians are not wrong to begin with principled affirmation; where he exceeds it, Christians are not wrong to begin with principled resistance, in both cases subjecting his actions to sober moral evaluation against God’s Word.
Moral Asymmetry as a Pattern, Not an Anomaly
Moore’s misapplication of Romans 13 does not arise from a stable doctrine of the civil magistrate. It arises from an asymmetrical moral imagination shaped by political priors, in which leftward uses of state power are interpreted as protective or necessary, while rightward uses of state power are treated as presumptively oppressive.
This is not an isolated lapse, but rather reflects a long-standing pattern in Moore’s public theology. Across issues and years, the pattern remains consistent.
When the state restrains conservative norms, institutions, or practices, Moore tends to frame such actions as morally serious and deserving of Christian compliance. Appeals to submission, civic responsibility, and Romans 13 itself are readily marshaled in support of such restraint.
When the state acts in ways that are contrary to progressive norms, Moore’s posture shifts. Authority is no longer something to be explained within its God-given vocation, but something to be interrogated and distrusted. Romans 13 in these contexts becomes a text Christians must be warned away from rather than a passage that clarifies the magistrate’s authority.
The same text expands or contracts depending on which moral instincts are being affirmed. The difference is not exegetical discovery or theological development. It is a willingness to treat the means as elastic so long as they serve a pre-committed end.
What emerges is not a coherent political theology, but a pragmatic one—capable of requiring submission in some contexts and delegitimizing authority in others without any apology for the contradiction. Scripture no longer determines the moral shape of civil authority; authority is filtered through prior political commitments. Romans 13 thus becomes exactly what Moore accuses others of making it: a rhetorical instrument, invoked or silenced as needed.
Reclaiming Romans 13
A faithful use of Romans 13 begins with submission to what the text actually teaches about civil authority. Paul presents the magistrate not as a morally ambiguous necessity, but as God’s servant, ordained for a specific end and accountable to God for how that end is pursued.
Romans 13 therefore requires Christians to affirm that coercive civil authority is legitimate and necessary. The magistrate bears the sword because God has entrusted him with the task of restraining wrongdoing and preserving public justice. Law enforcement, criminal punishment, and the maintenance of borders are not deviations from the magistrate’s vocation. They are ordinary expressions of it.
At the same time, Scripture places clear limits on that authority. The magistrate’s jurisdiction is civil, not ecclesial. He is not a minister of Word and sacrament, nor a governor of Christ’s church. When civil authority commands what God forbids or forbids what God commands, obedience to God must take precedence. Holding these truths together allows for moral evaluation of state action without dissolving the magistrate’s vocation. It makes principled submission and principled resistance possible.
The danger of Moore’s approach is that it transforms Romans 13 from a fixed doctrinal boundary into a flexible rhetorical instrument. When the meaning of “submission” and “the sword” expands or contracts based on desired political outcome, the text is no longer the master of the conscience; the interpreter is.
This theological instability does not exist in a vacuum. By severing Romans 13 from a stable, confessional doctrine of the magistrate, a void is created. Into that void steps the “spirit of the age.” When a theologian consistently finds that the Bible’s “nuance” happens to align with the editorial sensibilities of The New York Times or The New Yorker, we must ask whether the Word is shaping the world, or the world is shaping the Word.
A political theology that readily grants the state authority over the gathered worship of the church, yet recoils at the ordinary exercise of civil authority in preserving public order, is not the theology of the Bible nor the Baptist tradition. It is a theology of social accommodation.
Reclaiming Romans 13 requires more than avoiding “abuse”; it requires a humble submission to the order that God has given to His creation including the magistrate’s God-given vocation. We must be willing to say “yes” to the sword where God has commanded it, and a firm “no” to the state where it seeks to seize the keys of the Kingdom. To do otherwise is to leave the church adrift, steered by the changing winds of secular approval rather than the anchor of Holy Scripture.
