Romans 13:1 Meaning Let Every Soul Be in Subjection

Subjection to the higher powers is the whole nature of a person yielding to the governing centers above it, the soul falling into order beneath the awakened intelligence that is meant to rule it. The higher powers are not thrones in the outer world but the elevated faculties within, the ruling awareness at the crown to which every lower part is rightly answerable.

That all power comes from the one source means every governing force within a person descends from the single ground of being at the center, ordained from that origin. Order in the inner life follows the same law as order above: the lower is arranged under the higher, and all authority traces back to the one ground from which it flows.

Higher powers: the elevated governing faculties within a person, the ruling awareness at the crown God: the single ground of being at the center from which all inner authority descends and is ordained

An outer ruler holds more power than his strength alone can explain. He carries the image of an older authority already in the mind, the father who once seemed to order the whole world. When the old teaching holds that every authority comes from God, it points to that inner source, known before any throne is seen.

Someone who cannot find this ordering center within himself hands himself to whoever seems to hold it, so people bow easily, even to tyrants. In the end they obey a ruler not for his own strength, but because he stands in for a power they first felt inside.