The Sword In Romans 13 Is For Protecting, Not For Plundering

Police are to protect and serve.

"Be a good citizen. All governments are under God. Insofar as there is peace and order, it’s God’s order. So live responsibly as a citizen. If you’re irresponsible to the state, then you’re irresponsible with God, and God will hold you responsible. Duly constituted authorities are only a threat if you’re trying to get by with something. Decent citizens should have nothing to fear."

Paul, Romans 13:1-3a, the Message

In the apostle Paul's first century setting Roman soldiers were primarily in peacekeeping roles in the lands they occupied. Trained in pillaging and killing, they nevertheless often functioned as local police officers. In reality, they were guilty of a lot of police brutality, but the above text describes how God ordained police to function.

It is to these public officials the apostle Paul urged believers to show respect and compliance. This was not because he was advocating for unquestioned allegiance to Rome, but because he believed in a strategy of subversive submission toward enemy occupiers. 

Believers were to see themselves as resident aliens in their society, an outpost of the heaven-headquartered, worldwide, eternal government of God who operate by the agape love code, as in verses 8-10 of Romans 13. 

Don’t run up debts, except for the huge debt of love you owe each other. When you love others, you complete what the law has been after all along. The law code—don’t sleep with another person’s spouse, don’t take someone’s life, don’t take what isn’t yours, don’t always be wanting what you don’t have, and any other “don’t” you can think of—finally adds up to this: Love other people as well as you do yourself. You can’t go wrong when you love others. When you add up everything in the law code, the sum total is love.

Showing respect to civil servants operating by an earth-based law code is simply another demonstration of love for all, including enemies (Romans 12:19-21), but according to one early church manual, the Didaskalia, the church was not to receive gifts"from soldiers who behave unrighteously or from those who kill men, or from executioners or from any magistrates of the Roman Empire who are polluted in wars and have shed innocent blood without judgment."

Here are some of the clear differences between a God-sanctioned kind of police force, involving magistrates who maintain law and order in secular society, and a military force engaging in killing enemy combatants and trained in destroying other nations' population and property:

1) Police officers are to use force within the bounds of their local jurisdiction, not across national boundaries.

2) Police officers are trained to limit the use of force and to cause the least amount of harm to life and property as possible, whereas armies are often called on to inflict the greatest amount of damage possible in order to bring an enemy nation to its knees. 

3) Police forces aim to bring individual offenders to justice--to be tried in a court of law, offered legal counsel and have a jury of their peers determine guilt or innocence. Military forces obey whatever orders they are given, including attacking an entire city or neighborhood, and are not subject to the same kinds of laws and limitations.

4) Police do not normally use grenades, bombs or other explosive devices capable of mass destruction.

5) Police officers are not trained to demonize lawbreakers or label them as enemies.

Here are some words from 16th century reformer Menno Simons:

Love compels us to respectfully and humbly show all high officials what the Word of God commands them, how they should rightfully execute their office to the glory and praise of God... to punish the transgressors and protect the good; to judge rightly between a man and his fellows; to do justice to the widows and orphans and to the poor, to rule cities and countries justly by a good policy and administration, not contrary to God’s Word but to the benefit of the common people...

    We who were formerly no people at all, and who knew no peace, are now called to be a church of peace. True Christians do not know vengeance... Their hearts overflow with peace. Their mouths speak peace, and they walk in the way of peace...

    The regenerated do not go to war, or engage in strife. They are the children of peace, who have beaten their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks, and they know no war. Since we are conformed to the image of Christ, how then can we kill our enemies with the sword? Spears and swords made of iron we leave to those, alas, who consider human blood and swine’s blood as having well nigh equal value.