The Christian & Government

Your theme for this year is "Not Alone," meaning Christianity is not to be lived in isolation. We're called to have fellowship with God and with one another. We're also called into community with one another. And, that community isn't just made up of the people in our church or even just of other Christians. We have a responsibility to the communities in which we live. Tonight's topic addresses that. What is the role of the civil government in this world and how are Christians called to interact with it such that God's will is done within a nation?

Our Big Idea is: Civil Government is God's Instrument of Justice in a Fallen World.

We'll talk through four ideas that relate to that:

God ordained Civil Government to Restrain Evil in the World

Christians are called to obey the civil government as a default position

Government authority is not supreme - God is

Christians are called to use government power for the good of their neighbor and the glory of God

God Ordained Civil Government to Restrain Evil in the World

Prior to the Flood, the Bible describes the world like this:

The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. - Genesis 6:5

So, when Noah and his family left the Ark, had the human heart changed? No, it had not. So, God established civil government to restrain evil. Government is not in the business of heart change, it's in the business of behavior regulation. We aren't told here what form the government should take but we are told what it should do. Specifically, it should require the life of anyone who is a murderer:

And for your lifeblood I will surely demand an accounting. I will demand an accounting from every animal. And from each human being, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of another human being.

“Whoever sheds human blood,

by humans shall their blood be shed;

for in the image of God

has God made mankind. - Genesis 9:5-6

So, the first responsibility of government is to value and protect human life. Notice God "demands" this, it's not a suggestion.

So, that's one thing God put in place after the Flood to put restraints on people. Think about a "governor" on an engine. It doesn't stop your heart from wanting to go as fast as possible but it limits your ability to do so. That's kind of how government is to function. It's designed to put limits on how wicked we might otherwise be.

There's one other thing God does soon after the Flood to restrain the spread of evil:

The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”

So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel—because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth. - Genesis 11:6-9

Notice why God does this, it is again, to restrain evil. It's to frustrate people's cooperation with one another towards evil ends. Individual nation-states with their own languages and cultures restrain the spread of evil. God does not intend government to be all-encompassing either in authority (as we'll see later) or in geography. This not only helps restrain evil but makes government more effective in carrying out its God-ordained role. The fewer people a ruler governs, the more accountable he or she is going to be to them and the more he or she is going to know what's going on within their realm.

In Exodus 18 Moses is ruling the newly-freed nation of Israel all alone:

The next day Moses took his seat to serve as judge for the people, and they stood around him from morning till evening. When his father-in-law saw all that Moses was doing for the people, he said, “What is this you are doing for the people? Why do you alone sit as judge, while all these people stand around you from morning till evening?”

Moses answered him, “Because the people come to me to seek God’s will. Whenever they have a dispute, it is brought to me, and I decide between the parties and inform them of God’s decrees and instructions.” - Exodus 18:13-16

After observing this, Jethro tells Moses (Vv. 17-23) that he needs to concentrate on his role of being the people's representative before God but that he needs to leave other, lesser matters to other capable men lest he wear himself out. As a result of Jethro's advice, Moses instituted a system where there were leaders over thousands, hundreds, fifties and tens. Issues were handled at the lowest level possible with only the most difficult cases coming to Moses.

This is called the principle of subsidiarity. Let me quote from one of Al Mohler's recent "The Briefing" episodes:

"…meaning and authority and truth subsists in the smallest governmental unit, not in the largest — the smallest, most concentrated, most natural units of society. The most natural unit of society is marriage, and then the family; and after that, the extended family and the neighborhood and the kinship system; and after that the local community, you might say the village or the city; and after that, the county; after that, the state; after that, the nation.

Here is one of the experiences of human beings over the last several millennia: There is no operational unit larger than the nation state that has been able to demonstrate an even casual competence in carrying out the responsibilities of government."

This is something the American Founders recognized when they set up our system, three independent branches of government, separation of powers and a federal system with sovereign states. Because we are fallen, too much power concentrated with one individual or a small group of individuals is never a good thing. It allows evil to be compounded and unchecked and reduces the effectiveness of the rulers.

Fast forward to the New Testament and Romans 13, we get a similar view of God's plan for government:

For the one in authority is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. - Romans 13:4

So, government is God's idea and should be organized and run such that evil is restrained. Government is a common-grace institution tasked by God with providing temporal justice.

Christians are called to obey God-ordained authority as a default position - even when it's not perfect

Again from Romans 13:

Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and you will be commended. - Romans 13:1-3

As Christians our default position is to obey the authority God has placed in our lives. He's done this at several levels:

Wives are to submit to husbands, Children are to obey parent, Church members are to submit to Elders, Citizens are to submit to the government

Each one of these spheres has a God-ordained arena of authority and though they overlap, none gets their ultimate authority from any of the others but from God. Government doesn't have the authority to tell a church who they can have as members, the church doesn't have the authority to dictate government policy, the government doesn't have the authority to tell parents how to educate their children, nor do the elders of the church. As Christians we are called to submit to these God-ordained authorities within the spheres which He has created for them to operate.

This means in the sphere of laws and public policy I have to obey even when I don't like it or even when it's silly or even bad for society (provided I can do so without violating God's commands, something we'll get to in a minute). For example, when my youngest son started working at a grocery store here in Forsyth County, he had to pay, I believe it was $45, to obtain a permit to sell alcohol. In other words, he had to have permission from the government to drag a bottle of wine across a scanner, place it in a bag and take the customer's money for it and he had to pay to get that permission. That's ridiculous in my mind. But, God has not given me authority in local or state government to make those kinds of decisions so I (in this case my son and the grocery store) are called to submit to the law. Doesn't mean we can't work to get laws changed (again, something we'll get to in a bit) but while that is the law, we're called to obey it.

Government authority is not supreme - God's is

And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me." - Matthew 28:18

Jesus answered him, “You would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given you from above. Therefore he who delivered me over to you has the greater sin.” - John 19:11

Government authority is delegated by God and so, must be used within the guidelines he's set. At my job, if my boss is on vacation and he delegates his authority to me for a week, that doesn't mean I possess all his authority but only that which he's chosen to give me for a time. For example, I can't fire someone or write their appraisal. In Paul's instructions on obeying government he not only speaks of our responsibility but of the responsibility of government. Government is tasked with rewarding good and punishing evil. But, unfortunately, governments often do the opposite - the punish good and reward evil.

Government has no authority to require us to do that which God forbids or prevent us doing that which God requires. In fact, when government does so, we are to, as the Apostles did in the New Testament, "obey God rather than men."

This is why, in places like Communist China, Christians are under heavy persecution right now. The Communist Party of China demands to be the highest authority in their citizens' lives and Christians must say "no" to that.

Let's look at a couple of examples from Scripture.

In chapter one of Exodus we read about the Egyptians becoming concerned about how much the Israelites had multiplied. The Pharaoh saw this as a threat and so called the Hebrew midwives, Shiphrah and Puah (probably leaders of the midwives) before him and ordered them to kill all the male Hebrew babies at birth. Egypt was a theocratic autocracy. Pharaoh ruled uncontested as god on earth and his word was law. He WAS the civil government. Let's pick up the narrative in verse 17:

The midwives, however, feared God and did not do what the king of Egypt had told them to do; they let the boys live. Then the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and asked them, “Why have you done this? Why have you let the boys live?”

The midwives answered Pharaoh, “Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women; they are vigorous and give birth before the midwives arrive.”

So God was kind to the midwives and the people increased and became even more numerous. And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families of their own. - Exodus 1:17-20

So, the Hebrew midwives recognize that God, not Pharaoh, was the ultimate authority and acted accordingly when Pharaoh gets out of his swim lane, so-to-speak. Pharaoh doesn't have the power of life and death, only God does. He's delegated that power to the state as an instrument of justice when dealing with murder but otherwise he reserves it for himself and no government as the right to take it from him. This is why legalized abortion and euthanasia are wrong. They accrue to human beings a power God has reserved for himself.

This is also why, for example, at the Nuremberg Trials after WWII, the Nazi military officials, judges and other officials of the Third Reich couldn't hide behind the excuse that everything they did was legal in Germany at the time or that they were just following orders.

Fast forward to the New Testament. Jesus has been crucified by the Roman authorities at the instigation of the Jewish authorities. But, rather than eliminating Jesus' teachings, his death, burial and resurrection has caused them to begin to spread, and his disciples are preaching and saying things like:

This man was handed over to you by God’s deliberate plan and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross. - Acts 2:23

This, naturally, didn't endear them to the authorities because they're the "wicked men" Peter was referring to. So, when we get to chapter 4 of Acts we have a Peter and John seized by the Temple guards and brought before the Jewish rulers:

Then they called them in again and commanded them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus. But Peter and John replied, “Which is right in God’s eyes: to listen to you, or to him? You be the judges! As for us, we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard.”

After further threats they let them go. They could not decide how to punish them, because all the people were praising God for what had happened. - Acts 4:18-21

Of course, later on, we know they could decide how to punish them, they were beaten at one point and eventually all but one of the Twelve were martyred, either by the Jewish officials or the Romans. But, bottom line, they refused to obey the civil government because, again, it had no authority from God to dictate to the church on matters of the gospel.

In our day, one of the issues most likely to bring us into conflict with the civil government is that of gender, sexuality and marriage. Just this past month one of the candidates for president of one of the major political parties declared that churches who do not allow so-called same-sex marriage should lose their tax-exempt status. This is the government getting out of its swim lane and dictating to churches what they can and cannot teach. It's one thing to say we're going to end tax-exempt status for all charities, it's quite another for government to say we'll reward your church with tax-exempt status if you teach the way we tell you to teach. To that end, the elders here took the proactive step a few years back of specifying our position on those issues in our statement of faith so that when the time comes our view will be clear. We'll not bow our knee to the state on this issue.

Christians are called to use government power for the good of their neighbor and for the glory of God.

Civil government is a common grace institution but that does not preclude those who've received God's saving grace from participating in it. In fact, Christians should participate in government at all levels when possible. And when we do, it must be with the intent of glorifying God and working for the good of our neighbor - of rewarding good and punishing evil. I have no patience with Christians who run for office while assuring the voters their faith is personal and won't influence their decisions. If your faith has no bearing on how you make decisions, your faith is worthless.

There are several examples in scripture of God's people being involved in government, often in pagan nations, while using their positions for the good of their fellow citizens and the glory of God.

Joseph is one example. He was raised to the second highest position in Egypt. There he used his God-given gifts and talents to organize the nation in preparation for a coming famine, leading to the saving of thousands of lives and the preservation of God's people through whom the Messiah would come.

Daniel is another. Taken captive by a pagan king, he also rose to become one of the top officials in the kingdom, across the reigns of several kings and was known not only for his integrity and good governance but for his dedication to God. So much so that those who were jealous of him knew the only way they could compromise Daniel's position was to force him to choose between loyalty to the government for loyalty to God. Daniel chose the latter.

That's all well and good but I'll never be raised to such levels of authority, I'll probably never even be a county commissioner.

But, here's the thing, we have more say in what happens with our government than most people have had in the history of the world. That's a blessing from God and something we're called to be good stewards of. We're called to use that power, however little or much it is, the same way Joseph and Daniel did, for the glory of God and the good of our neighbor.

We choose those who represent us, we have the right to assemble, to petition the government for redress of grievances, the freedom to speak publicly about things we want to see changed, etc.

We must therefore, use those rights and freedoms to push government toward rewarding good and punishing evil and to oppose government rewarding evil and punishing good. What does that look like? That's one of the things you all will discuss in your small groups but let me just say this:

The biggest political issue of our day goes all the way back to the establishment of civil government in Genesis. If you remember we said civil government was established by God to protect the sanctity of human life. That's its prime directive, if you will. That's the litmus test of whether a government promotes good and punishes evil - how they value and protect human life (or not).

Jonathan Leeman of 9Marks wrote:

"Everything a government does—every law it makes, every courtroom ruling it declares, every executive agency code it enforces—it should do for the purpose of protecting and affirming its citizens as God-imagers."

Yet today, around 800,000 babies are legally murdered in the United States every year. Every. Year. That's over 2,000 children each day. Think about that. Yesterday, 2,000 kids died with the blessing of our government. Whatever else we do politically, we cannot, as Christians, support this carnage with our vote, our money or our time. And more than that, we should actively oppose it with all God-honoring means at our disposal. That's what it looks like to be Daniel, or the Hebrew midwives or Shadrack, Meshach and Abednego in our age.