Worshiping God Through Paying Taxes

April 11th, 2025
by Lance Waldie

Romans 13:6-7 For because of this you also pay taxes, for rulers are servants of God, devoting themselves to this very thing. 7 Render to all what is due them: tax to whom tax is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honor to whom honor.

In v. 6 Paul says that governing authorities are “servants” (Gr. leitourgos) of God. This term for “servant” is a different word than the one translated the same way in 13:4 (diakonos). In v. 6 the Greek word is the same one used in the LXX (Greek version of the Hebrew OT) to denote those chosen to serve in the Jewish Temple, namely those who worship Yahweh. Likewise, in the NT, the word always refers to Christian service. Now since the word was used in secular Greek to denote public officials who were not religious, it seems as if Paul is closely identifying the service of public officials with those who offer religious service to God. In other words, obeying one’s secular authorities, they being ordained by God, is akin to obeying one’s spiritual authorities. Either way, one serves God obediently when they serve civil authorities properly.

Paul’s admonition to the Christians in Rome to obey their governing authorities (13:1-5) is a curious topic to follow on the heels of the command to love (12:9-21), which in itself is the way to offer oneself to God as a living sacrifice for worship (12:1). Now he goes a step further and begins to speak of the necessity of paying taxes, for the governing authorities need to be paid for their services to protect and govern the people God has put under them. In writing this, it is possible that Paul may have feared that some Christians might have equated paying taxes to a pagan government as conforming to the world—something he forbade as servants of Jesus Christ (12:2). So, in keeping with the fact that all governing authorities are ordained by God, whether they are Christian or not, Paul urges obedience to them. New Testament scholar Douglas Moo offers the following three possibilities as to the socio-political setting of Paul’s day that might have been the background for his appeal to obey the government.

First, because Jews and Christians had been expelled from Rome under Claudius (Acts 18:2) approximately seven years prior to Paul’s writing and had disrupted them greatly, Paul may have written Romans 13:1-7 to quell the resentment among Christians against the Romans.

A second possibility as to why Paul wrote what he did in Romans 13 is that the decade of the 50s had seen a rise in the activity of the zealots in the Roman Empire, who were the political terrorists of the day trying to rid the world of Roman authority. They preached to Jews that the Romans had no jurisdiction over them and that they should revolt against the Empire since being in subjection to them was contrary to Israel’s calling as a theocracy as a nation under God.

A third possibility of why Paul wrote Romans 13 might center around a known tax crisis that existed in the middle 50s in Rome. Tacitus, a Roman historian of that day, records a resistance against the payment of indirect taxes that later resulted in a tax revolt against the Roman government in AD 58, about a year after Paul penned his letter to the Roman Church. Perhaps Paul knew of this impending trouble, even among Christians, and this might be why he climaxed his call to them in 13:7 with a command to pay their taxes.

Food For Thought
Christians are not exempt from paying taxes unless the government grants them exemption like it does in the modern day for some non-profit organizations. Even Jesus was careful to pay taxes in order to remain above reproach (Matt. 17:24-27). That in itself speaks volumes to us as Christians! So, whatever is owed to another, whether taxes, honor, revenue, or respect—regardless of whether or not we inwardly respect them—obedience to this command is part of our ongoing worship, offerings our very selves unto the God of mercies (cf. 12:1).