While sin is endemic to the human condition, it is strikingly and distinctively evident in the behavior of the state as an institution and in the choices of state actors. State authority is questionable for multiple reasons, not least that, although consent is a presumptive prerequisite for the exercise of authority, states lack consensual foundations. Views of divine authority as model for and ground of state power are doubtful, and so provide little justification for state action. Putative divine covenants fail to warrant state action; the same is true of appeals to divine mandates, creational orders, or conceptions of states as protectors of rights. Tradition isn’t a satisfactory basis for state authority either. Any putative divine support for the existence and operation of the state is best seen as a matter of accommodation to human limitation.