36 While Genesis portrays God as active within His creation, Romans 13 is even clearer as it addresses God and government together. Taking the passage at face value leaves us with only one answer to the following question: Where does government come from? The answer is “God,” for there is “no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.” This is, more than anything, the Bible’s fundamental insight about government. While many Christians may know this on one level, that knowledge too often fails to permeate our political thoughts and actions. The divine origin of government should recondition the manner in which we see government. Government proceeds not from our own tainted hands, the clutches of the Devil, or from words printed on a brittle parchment locked in the National Archives, but from an omniscient and omnipotent God. The first lesson, then, is that government is not about us and it does not flow from us, but it is about God. In Romans 13:1, Paul uses the word “instituted.” What is an institution, at least according to Scripture? God institutes three things — the family, the church, and government. What do these have in common? They are social (as opposed to individual) organizations that allow humans to achieve things collectively they cannot adequately achieve on their own. The family provides a stable environment for producing, raising, and shaping children. The church accomplishes God’s mission by spreading His word and providing a community for Christians. What about government? What does it do? Paul gives at least a partial answer in Romans 13. Government exists to instill justice and restrain evil through the use of the “sword,” or “coercive” power. There is much more to say on this front, but that comes in the next section. The presence of evil, though, raises an interesting issue for the nature of government and God’s institution of it. Did God create government only as a response to sin? In other words, is it more accurate to say government, though from God, can be traced to the fall of humans in Genesis 3? Is government only a consequence of sin? Though it might be tempting to say it is, this view is too limited. God created Adam and Eve in His own image (Gen. 1:26). What, precisely, does this mean? We can debate the nature of the Imago Dei and still not come to an agreement. However, we do know there are particular divine elements imprinted on us as created beings. One of those is our social nature. In that same passage referenced above, we read “Then God said, ‘Let us make man inour image, after our likeness” (emphasis added).
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