Blessing Under Authority

I've been taught, and I believe that there is great blessing in submitting to authority. However I do not believe that there is blessing in submitting to unlawful authority. I've been told by well-respected people that even if the authority is wrong, and we submit to them, we will be blessed. I'd like to look at a few scriptures of how this principle works.

1. In 2 Kings 17, we find that the Children of Israel are being accused of following their civil ruler Jeroboam into sin. The king was leading the people away from the Lord's commandments and statutes and forcing them to follow his own man-made commandments and statutes. Here we see that God is bringing judgement for this evil. Let's see how the people were blessed for submitting to their civil authority:

2. 22 For the children of Israel walked in all the sins of Jeroboam which he
   did; they did not depart from them, 23 until the LORD removed Israel out of His sight, as He had said by all His servants the prophets. So Israel was carried away from their own land to Assyria, as it is to this day.

3. In 2 Kings 21, we read a similar passage except this time the people are following the wicked King Manasseh. Lets see what blessing they received:

4. 12 therefore thus says the LORD God of Israel: ‘Behold, I am bringing such
   calamity upon Jerusalem and Judah, that whoever hears of it, both his ears will tingle.

5. In 2 Chronicles 21, the prophet Elijah writes a letter to the wicked king Jehoram because "he made high places in the mountains of Judah, and caused the inhabitants of Jerusalem to commit harlotry, and led Judah astray." Let's look at what blessing the people will receive this time:

6. 12 Because you have not walked in the ways of Jehoshaphat your father, or in the ways of Asa king of Judah, 13 but have walked in the way of the kings of Israel, and have made Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem to play the harlot like the harlotry of the house of Ahab, and also have killed your brothers, those of your father’s household, who were better than yourself, 14
   behold, the LORD will strike your people with a serious affliction—your children, your wives, and all your possessions; 15 and you will become very sick with a disease of your intestines, until your intestines come out by reason of the sickness, day by day.

   And further: 16 Moreover the LORD stirred up against Jehoram the spirit of the Philistines and the Arabians who were near the Ethiopians. 17 And they came up into Judah and invaded it, and carried away all the possessions that were found in the king’s house, and also his sons and his wives, so that there was not a son left to him except Jehoahaz, the youngest of his sons. 18 After all this the LORD struck him in his intestines with an incurable disease. 19 Then it happened in the course of time, after the end of two years, that his intestines came out because of his sickness; so he died in severe pain. And his people made no burning for him, like the burning for his fathers.

Here are three examples of the people submitting and obeying their civil authority and they did not receive a blessing but rather a curse! Now why would judge them for obeying their authority? Could it be because God did not give the king any authority to break the law and statutes of God?

There is also numerous examples of God blessing the people's civil disobedience and even lying to a civil ruler. Why? Because God never commands or intends for His people to submit to unlawful authority. Why would God put the unrighteous in authority over the righteous? The only time this happens in the word of God is either against God's will or in judgement of the sins of the righteous.

There is blessing in submitting to lawful authority. There is cursings available for submission to unlawful authority. But I've been told that the Bible doesn't specify make any distinction between lawful and unlawful authority. The reason being that the people understood the difference between the two. Why else would the Scribes and Pharisees desire to know where Jesus got His authority? Because they understood that there was lawful authority and unlawful authority. They understood, amidst there many short-comings that there were authorities that were not to be obeyed, and that there were authorities that were to be obeyed.

If the Roman Christians to whom Paul wrote his letter didn't have any concept for this distinction, then there wouldn't have been any Roman Christian martyrs. The Christians in Rome were killed for their civil disobedience.