***Well, this piece should have gone live yesterday. In the busyness of the morning, although I managed to get it written, I forgot to actually make it live. So, today, you get a two-for-one deal. Enjoy!***

“And for this reason you pay taxes, since the authorities are God’s servants, continually attending to these tasks. Pay your obligations to everyone: taxes to those you owe taxes, tolls to those you owe tolls, respect to those you owe respect, and honor to those you owe honor.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Benjamin Franklin is famous for many things. He was a regular Da Vinci of his age. One of the statements he immortalized is that nothing is certain except death and taxes. If you are operating from a basically secular worldview framework, he’s not wrong in his assessment, which isn’t all that encouraging because we’re generally not all that much a fan of either. Death we can’t do much about. But taxes seem like we should. We can at least rebel against them. Paul, though, rather irritatingly says we shouldn’t. In fact, we should pay all of our obligations. Let’s talk about it.

One of the fundamental tasks of government is to promote the general welfare, as the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution puts it. This means it exists to do things for everybody that nobody could manage on their own. This would include things like building and maintaining good roads, creating and maintaining a postal service, and providing for the defense of the nation. There is obviously more than that short list, but those are some of the absolute basics. Much beyond that, and you’ll start to get more debate over what should go on the list and what shouldn’t. If a government is doing these basic things well, it won’t last long, especially in an even somewhat democratic system.

Well, doing things like these is not something that can be done for free. It costs money; sometimes lots of money. That money has to come from somewhere. The government can’t simply print it. Well, it can technically print it, but because of the basic laws of economics, that path will quickly torch an economy, and then it won’t be able to do those things for long. In order to provide these various public goods, a government must have some sort of system for generating revenue. Historically speaking, taxes have been how this happens.

Taxes are the monies the government collects in order to fund various general welfare items for its people. How exactly taxes are collected and which things are taxed at what amount is a matter of rather vigorous debate since no actually enjoys paying taxes, but that taxes need to be collected by the government in order to accomplish its most basic tasks is an essential element of good governance.

Here’s the thing about taxes: while nobody likes them, it is only fair that if everyone is benefiting from the use of some public good, that everyone helps fund the maintenance of that public good. If everyone drives on the roads, everyone should contribute to their upkeep. If everyone benefits from the postal system, everyone should help to fund the postal system. If everyone is kept safe by the armies of a nation, everyone should help to pay the soldiers and make sure they are properly equipped for their task. When everyone benefits, everyone should contribute.

Beyond that basic understanding, we’re going to run into a pretty fierce debate about the whos and hows of taxation. Different governments will have different approaches. Some will be more effective than others. Some will be fairer than others. But all of them are aiming toward the same goal: properly funding the apparatus that serves the people.

Now, on the other side of this, the government must be held accountable for using public funds honestly and properly. Governments must gain and maintain the trust of their people. A populace that has a low trust in government is going to be more resistant to paying taxes, making it harder to accomplish basic tasks, further weakening public support, and creating a death spiral for a particular government. If public funds are being misused in some way, that is going to create an enormous barrier to future government efforts.

For followers of Jesus who understand why the government exists in the first place, though, to a certain extent, this last part doesn’t matter. When the God-instituted authorities over our lives charge taxes for the work they do on our behalf, we are to pay those taxes. We don’t have to agree or support their usage once we have paid them. We pay them as a reflection of our submission to their God-given authority. Now, if they are being used improperly and there is a system in place for us to challenge and change how they are being used, we can make use of that system like any other citizen, but we still pay them.

Bad government or even hostile government doesn’t give us an excuse for not paying them. Remember, Paul was living under the Roman Empire when he wrote what he did here: “And for this reason you pay taxes, since the authorities are God’s servants, continually attending to these tasks.” The phrase, “for this reason,” actually refers forward rather than backward as Paul goes on to give the reason in the second part of the verse. The point, though, is pretty clear. Even if we don’t like or agree with the government, when the government institutes taxes, we are to pay those taxes.

We are to do that not simply for reasons of good citizenship or submission to God-instituted authority, although those are both part of the reason we pay our taxes. We do this because, as Paul writes next, we are to be the kind of people who pay all of our obligations. We shouldn’t be in any kind of debt to anyone if we can help. And if we are, we work diligently to get out of that debt so that God can be our only master.

“Pay your obligations to everyone,” Paul writes. “Taxes to those you owe taxes, tolls to those you owe tolls, respect to those you owe respect, and honor to those you owe honor.” Paul continually broadens things out here to larger and larger spheres of life, but all of these also refer to our relationship to the government. There’s a both-and nature to it. We are to pay our taxes just like all our other obligations. We do this because we are the people of a God who meets all of His obligations.

Paying taxes isn’t any fun, especially when we don’t like or agree with how they are being used. But it’s part of the task of being good citizens. And so, we pay our taxes. We seek to be good citizens. We seek the peace and prosperity of our city, aiming by our efforts to make manifest the goodness of God’s kingdom wherever we happen to be living. We do this so that even if our present contexts aren’t very positive or well-managed, we can point people toward one that is and which they can be a part of no matter where they are.