NOTES for Rom 13:7
Paul's attitude toward a person's obligations can at first glance seem somewhat contradictory. He says: if you owe someone something, this debt binds you and requires repayment. Everyone must receive what he has a right to, and no one may be denied this, whether it is tax, obedience, or simple respect. And immediately he adds: owe no one anything except the debt of mutual love. Paul assesses obligations themselves in the context of a person's relation to secular authority, a theme that was undoubtedly very sharp at the time.
It was sharp if only because of the fairly widespread political messianism in Jewish circles, which considered the very existence of secular authority evil and obedience to that authority a sin. Paul does not think so. He says directly that there is no authority that could exist apart from God's will. And this is not a call to blind loyalty, as many would like, or on the contrary would not like, to think, but a statement of an obvious fact. If God allows a particular authority to exist, then He does not consider it necessary to intervene. As for a Christian's attitude toward secular authority, the matter is more complex.
On one side, in the context of what Paul says, one can speak of a "God-pleasing" or "God-opposing" authority as a state institution only very relatively. "There is no authority except from God" sounds rather indifferent in the context of world history, and even Roman history, with its palace coups and other upheavals, conquests, revolutions, and so on. If any authority is "from God," then one can speak of legitimate authority only very relatively. But then one can also speak of God-pleasing authority only very relatively. Rather, one has to conclude that God only tolerates any authority for a time in order to avoid something worse, and it is better for a Christian not to interfere here. But one can obey any authority only "for conscience' sake," otherwise obedience loses every meaning.
Any other obedience does not count before God. And if it cannot be "for conscience' sake," then before God it is more honest to refuse obedience to the authority: thus at least one can avoid the hypocrisy of formal obedience, and therefore the violation of at least the ninth commandment. Everything a person owes to representatives of secular, or any other, authority he owes only as a consequence of this obedience "for conscience' sake." But if it is "for conscience' sake," then it must be to the end, so that there is nothing for which to reproach oneself and so that one can answer for one's obedience in conscience before people and before God.
Here it is the same gospel "let your yes be yes, and your no be no." And this concerns all human relationships in general: all obligations flow only from mutual love. Without it, fulfilling a duty becomes a kind of spiritual, if not psychological, hypocrisy. A fulfillment that spiritually dries out the one who performs it and does not benefit the one who enjoys the fruits of such fulfillment. Such relationships are impossible in the Kingdom, and the apostle calls Christians in every case to remain residents of the Kingdom, whether this concerns their attitude toward authority or toward one another.