“Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.” - George Washington
In the United States of America, we the people have been given a very unique responsibility and place in our government. I believe that the terms set forth in Romans 13 must be defined in order for its citizens to understand what this text is saying for our time and our culture.
Without reading into the text and making it say what one wants it to say, let’s just take a look at two terms from Romans 13 that I believe need to be defined. Those terms are “governing authorities” and “subjects.”
Who are the “governing authorities” in the United States of America? Well, it’s really not difficult to figure out when one takes a look at our founding documents.
The U.S. Constitution’s preamble makes it quite clear:
“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
That’s right – “We the people.” We The People are the governing authorities.
The next term we need to define is “subjects.” Who are the subjects in our form of government?
When I was a youth, I was taught that being elected to serve the people of this nation was the ultimate act of service for our country. In our form of government, those elected to governmental office are the subjects to the people.
The subjects, the servants = those who work for “We the People.”
Let’s keep this in mind. We the People are ultimately the earthly “governing authorities” in the United States. We the People elect our representatives and even the office of president and our state governors to serve us.
According to Romans 13, God is the one who establishes earthy governing authorities. In our form of government, God has established We the People as the earthly governing authorities in this nation, which is an incredible responsibility. He also establishes those who are subjects.
If the elected officials (including those who are appointed into positions and those who work for them) are the subjects, and they decide to rebel against the governing authorities (We the People), then we see in Romans 13 that they are rebelling against what God Himself has instituted. They will bring judgment onto themselves.
So, I’d like to ask you a question. If Almighty God is sovereign and He is the one who institutes and ordains kings, princes, and in our case We the People as the governing earthly authority, with inalienable rights, do you trust Him that He knew what He was doing when He instituted our nation’s government in the late 1700s with what we find in the U.S. Constitution? That word “inalienable” has a powerful definition.
The definition for the word inalienable is: unable to be taken away from or given away by the possessor. So, inalienable rights are rights that are unable to be taken away from or given away by the possessor. We the People have been given a great responsibility from Almighty God. Do you realize what God Almighty allowed at the founding of our nation? He ordained that even if someone wanted to take away our God-given rights OR if we would decide to try to shirk our responsibility as human beings and citizens of this nation and try to give our God given rights away, we could not. Why? Because He allowed and ordained inalienable rights!
Inalienable rights, by definition, are unable to be taken away from or given away by the possessor. We the People are not being selfish in the least by claiming these rights; we are being responsible by living them out in our very lives. God ordained them.
So, to not live them out or to try to shirk our duty by not taking responsibility in living them out is actually being selfish and goes against what God Himself instituted back at the founding of our nation.
The following is a quote from Clarence Manion:
“Government does not create liberty; on the contrary, government is the one persisting danger of human liberty… This role of government as the enemy of liberty was well understood by the Founding Fathers of the Republic. They wished government to have sufficient power to ‘restrain men from injuring one another.’ But beyond that, they tied it down securely with constitutional limitations, separation of powers, bills of rights, and other legal barriers and barbed wire entanglements.”
This is just one reason why I am so adamant about the importance of The Way Forward Is Back. The way forward in our nation is not giving the state more and more power. The way forward is to get back to living out what this nation was founded upon and allowing We the People to live in our God-given liberty, with limited government. We need to promote individual responsibility so individuals we can choose to decide he or she wants to do with the life so graciously given to them and their family.
“Resistance to tyranny becomes the Christian and social duty of each individual… Continue steadfast, and with a proper sense of your dependence on God, nobly defend those rights which heaven gave, no man ought to take from us.” - Resolution from the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, 1774
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