57Then some stood up and gave this false testimony against him: 58"We heard him say, 'I will destroy this man-made temple and in three days will build another, not made by man.' " 59Yet even then their testimony did not agree.
60Then the high priest stood up before them and asked Jesus, "Are you not going to answer? What is this testimony that these men are bringing against you?" 61But Jesus remained silent and gave no answer. Again the high priest asked him, "Are you the Christ,[f] the Son of the Blessed One?"
62"I am," said Jesus. "And you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven."
63The high priest tore his clothes. "Why do we need any more witnesses?" he asked. 64"You have heard the blasphemy. What do you think?"
Obviously what Jesus said was not blasphemy because He is the Son of God, Messiah, etc. However, we forget that Jesus' trial actually did fall into an area that was considered acceptable by God for the state to act in Israel, which was to punish blasphemy. God allowed them to remain ignorant of the truth, something which would have completely turned the trial on its head, because God had His own purposes at work here. Had the truth been revealed by revelation immediately after they initially condemned Him, and they continued on with the punishment, it would have been an entirely different matter of justice, role of government, etc.
It is important to keep these facts in mind because many Christians seriously believe that the trial of Jesus was nothing more than a show trial by a kangaroo court, when it was a far more complicated thing that actually did intersect with clearly ordained functions of government. In other words, Jesus was not put to death by government fiat, but rather under a law that had clear authority. So when the government simply does as it pleases, and legislates its way into legitimizing any criminal enterprise it pleases, that is not a fair comparison at all with the way that Jesus was tried and sentenced to death. A government that simply eschews the rule of law altogether or that legislates its way into a state equivalent to that is not legitimate under Romans 13 because it is not acting as God's agent the way that even the Sanhedrin was in Mark 14.
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I disagree that Jesus' trial was legit.
If I were His lawyer (ha! That's backwards) the first thing I'd do is file a quo warranto action. Even if the blasphemy charge was kosher, by what right did a Roman court try and execute him for it? There's no provision in the Torah allowing our uncircumcised overlords to enforce Torah penalties.
Much more importantly, Matthew 26:59-61 and Mark 14:56, 57 explicitly state that the chief priests beat the bushes until they found false witnesses to accuse Him. If the prosecution looking under rocks for perjurious witnesses isn't "eschewing the rule of law" (the 9th commandment, for instance) I don't know what is.
The point I was trying to make was that Jesus was not killed entirely by fiat. Ok, so I may not have gotten it entirely right when it comes to how far the state went to find "evidence" against Him, but what matters here WRT Romans 13 is that Jesus was punished according to a legitimate law. It was no "you'll spend ten years in prison for jay walking" sort of deal or "we'll burn your house down if you smoke a joint" sort of law. It was one that was recognized as a legitimate law, meaning that the issue at stake with Jesus was the corruption of a good law that He was submitting to, not the use, corrupt or not, of an unjust law.