“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” Matthew 28:18
Do you lament what’s happening in America? Does the suppression of liberty and freedom of speech distress you? Do you wonder how it’s all happening and at such a breakneck speed? Well, the answer is quite simple. The vast majority of Christians are syncretists today. That is to say, they don’t believe what Jesus said here in Matthew. They’ve fallen for the lie that there’s a separation between church and state in that the state is neutral. But it assuredly is not. America has a religion. It’s secular humanism and it saturates and controls all authority structures in the nation. True Christians must reject this.
The greatest achievement of the Enemy has been his ability to convince even the church that this isn’t happening. If we’re talking about politics and voting then we’re talking about government. If we’re talking about government, we’re talking about authority. And if we’re talking about authority we must be talking about God. In other words, the question before us, before we can rightly assess any candidate, political party, or policy, is what does God have to say about the nature and role of government? It’s to our shame that professing Christians haven’t bothered to ask this question.
A few things to note.
First, the church is remiss in not speaking forthrightly on the subjects of law, economics, rights, self-defense and government – especially the state’s designated role. It’s at this point that, regrettably, we must move to chastise believers for their neglect. The reason for this neglect, incidentally, should be understood as it’s an issue of great importance. All of these issues are moral. To say anything about these issues is to say something that’s based on a moral principle and no such principle can exist unless it’s based on theology. Secular humanism is a theology, a religion…a false one, indeed. It seeks to save mankind through government instead of the cross. But Christians, not understanding this, have tried to fight the advancements of humanism’s handmaiden, Marxism, with the dull sword of conservatism rather than the flaming sword of Scripture. It’s a like a man trying to stop an avalanche with a shovel. The weight of sin, error and lies will always overwhelm us lest we stand on Scripture. Again: on every issue under the sun man must make a moral evaluation and none can be made without reference to a fixed religious (transcendental) standard. This means that no one is neutral and every man/woman must choose this day whom they will serve. Unfortunately, in accepting the premises of humanism, the overwhelming majority of the church has the self-inflicted wound of the mark of the Beast upon their head.
In the Christian homeschool community in my area, for example, there were quite a few anguished voices rising up over what they saw as the blight of the Trump presidency. His personal character was the issue with these critics and not particular policies. We should be sure that the reason for this absence of overall policy discussion was because of the absence of sound doctrine from the church. Ask the average Christian about the nature of government and you’ll get, if anything intelligible at all, a motley buffet of personal preferences devoid of biblical coherence. Indeed, if the American church is a church at all, one can hardly tell sometimes since so many of us think just like the world. There’s a bizarre allergy even within the church to starting one’s thinking by presupposing the authority of Scripture. This leads in every case it’s tried to intellectual foolishness and conflict. Cain, for example, was a poor brother not merely because he was surly and depressed, especially since that led to murder, but because he was ungodly. The root of all conflict is in man’s insistence upon pushing God from his thoughts and being his own moral standard. Mankind can never have peace unless he has righteousness and that can’t happen apart from the word and will of the Lord. From this simple truth we can deduce that it’s the height of hatred and the antithesis of love for any man to shun the word of God since that always and inevitably leads to conflict.
To be speaking of law, economics and politics is to speak about amazing subjects. We’re talking about ruling! It should humble us who are supposed to know the Scriptures that a slightly wiser mind than our own, Solomon, when confronted with the reality of ruling Israel, beseeched God for the wisdom to do so. Solomon, you see, admitted the obvious to God. “Who can know how to handle so many people?” That was the new King’s honest assessment of the situation to which the Lord was pleased. So many voters, however, don’t worry about humility. The one thing you see in this and every sin is the gospel of American self-esteem instead of the gospel of repentance. The default setting of every sinner is, “what do I want?” The renewed mind says, in glorious humility, at last seeing reality aright, “What does the Lord/Scripture say?” The mouth that speaks of moral things (and all things are ultimately moral) without referencing the non-contradictory biblical principles is speaking from a heart that’s devoted to two masters.
Thus, we note that not in all the objections logged against Mr. Trump was there ever the slightest, nor remotest, attempt to explain the biblical standard of government. Not once. Never. Nada. Zip. Zero. Let that sink in. Not once did I hear or read any Christian stop to consider the biblical definition of government before weighing in on politics and voting. The question “by what authority?” never occurred to anyone. This is, of course, an affliction of both the right and the left but painfully more so from the left. The modern Christian never wrestles with the subject of whether to give to God or Caesar for the simple reason that he’s mindlessly accepted the lie that everything is Caesar’s.
There can be only two reasons for this:
First, the church must be completely unconcerned with what God has to say about rights, law, economics and proper government or, second, it’s convinced itself that He hasn’t spoken on the subject at all. Both are frightful errors and are precisely why American culture is circling the drain.
If the reason why a Christian hasn’t brought up God’s design for the civil magistrate is due to his/her disinterest in what He has to say, then we must inquire as to whether this is a Christian at all. A follower of Christ is, after all, a disciple of Him. True Christians are blessed to seek and know the will of the Lord and must be, therefore, students of Scripture. To not use the Bible as one’s final standard of authority in reasoning and morality is to use something else, which is to say that this something else (secular humanism in this case) is god.
As to the second reason, to think that God hasn’t spoken on the subject is a perilous sign of how biblically illiterate America has become as of late. It really ought to make a Christian blush when they begin to issue ethical proclamations from on high without reference to God’s word. In the whole, “well, I never…” tantrum of professing Christendom about Mr. Trump, it staggers the imagination that more didn’t pause and consider what it was that they were talking about. The logic is, after all, rather easy to follow.
If a person is unfit for public office it’s because we know what public office – that is, government – really is. We know what it’s designed to do, where its authority comes from and whom it serves. This would lead to us being far more offended at the state’s power grabs, its usurpation of power and abuse of authority, and its insistence upon being a moral free agent, then anything Donald Trump did.
Well, this is precisely where the American church is knee deep in serious sin. It hasn’t thought through the nature and role of government because it doesn’t want to hear what God has to say about it. And it doesn’t want to hear it because, right and left, people prefer the illusion of power over God’s righteous rule. He says, unequivocally, unquestionably, that the government is…steady yourself…His servant! In Romans 13 God literally calls the civil magistrate His on three separate occasions. The Holy Spirit doesn’t stutter. If He says it once that’s still authoritative. But, knowing our hardness of heart, slowness to believe, and ungodly desire to rule unilaterally, He repeats it three times when discussing the issue. Three times! It’s implied right from the start of Romans 13 (for there are no authorities except from God) that God is sovereign and gives us the basic structures of life, which are church, family and state. But for the issue at hand we’re told three times that the civil authorities are God’s servant.
The rank and file Christian is no better than the most vile sinner when it comes to this subject because he/she has accepted the ridiculous lie that you can’t bring Christianity into politics. That, my friends, is a huge no-no to the modern self-described sophisticate. And Christians accept this as though it came down Sinai on a separate tablet! The “don’t ram your religion down my throat crowd” doesn’t extend the same courtesy to the Christian with the secular humanism that’s at the root of that nonsense. And the church doesn’t even bother to point out this glaring contradiction because it doesn’t even notice it. How shameful! It’s on this altar that the modern Christian commits the most foul and putrid spiritual adultery. In blindness, we end up supporting the horrific sins such as abortion and all the sexual idolatry that goes along with it, redistribution of wealth (covetousness and theft), secular humanist schools that indoctrinate our young, unbiblical wars (non-self defense) and so many others.
The thing is, God doesn’t agree with our premise of neutrality; if He isn’t Lord of all He isn’t Lord at all. Where did the government’s authority come from? Is morality and truth up for a vote or is it God who decides? We must all be careful to remember that the Lord is rather picky when it comes to His sovereignty and no one who picks a fight with the Almighty comes out well. Pharaoh fared quite badly and Nebuchadnezzar became an involuntary vegan when they declared themselves sovereign. The voter who says that America is a pure democracy and that they’re the government – that it’s from him (the people), for him and to him – has literally rewritten Romans 11:33-36. Again, we must be clear…God disagrees. All authority ends at His throne, not Washington. The civil magistrate is His servant and His alone and may only act in accordance with the holy principles set forth in Scripture. You can’t have it. You can’t redefine it. You don’t get “fix” what the Lord made. In all, you’re the problem and it’s a terribly evil and unloving thing to do because it’s rebellion against God and it’s exactly that which causes all the horrific miseries you think you’re trying to fix in the first place.
CNN and the New York Times would say:
Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of God,
Nor stands in the way of Christians, nor sits in the seat with Bibles
But his delight is in the law of our news and on our news he meditates day and night
He is like a tree planted where there is no global warming,
Nor people who make more money than him…
Modern politics, via the Democrat Party, is openly messianic and, like all false religions, demands that one has no higher standard of authority than itself. This is why Democrats hated Donald Trump with such utter abandon. He was on their throne in Washington. To use such institutions as our standard of authority instead of God’s word is reprehensible but exactly what’s left when we accept the lie that you can’t bring God into politics.
So, there’s a huge vacuum where God meant for there to be clarity. The government, or civil authority, is an institution that He ordained. The insanity of sin is that it always takes a good thing, in this case government, and tries to force it to do what it can’t. For example, sex and money, which are good things, are quite often used in ungodly ways. The consequences of this are horrific. The wages of sexual sin are all around us in America. What God meant for the beauty of marriage, sin has distorted and turned into the most vile expressions of self-abasement. Likewise, God established the civil magistrate for a specific and wonderful purpose but man insists on using it according to his own arbitrary standards.
Not only are we told that the civil magistrate is God’s, we’re also told the reason for its existence: it’s God’s avenger. Vengeance is mine, says the Lord and, as far as justice/vengeance on earth is concerned, He’s assigned the task of carrying that out to the civil government.
That’s it right there. Case closed. Confusion gone. We’re all set.
God tells us never to avenge ourselves but to leave it to the wrath of God (Romans 12:19). Vengeance, we’re told, is God’s and God’s vengeance, as we see in Romans 13:4), is carried out by His servant, the government. Throughout this treatise on public life and politics we see the wisdom of God for how we can live as peacefully as possible in a sin riddled world. The true church preaches the gospel to the world, teaching that God will forgive sins in Christ for those who repent. The state, on the other hand, is ordained by God to punish interpersonal sin, otherwise known as crime. Government is ordained by God to physically punish those things that an individual could defend himself with force if possible. That’s the key principle at work. Sin is dealt with by the church through the preaching of the gospel; crime is dealt with by the civil magistrate. It was, incidentally, God that separated church and state, not man. Man is always trying to merge the two. Man is always, like Cain, angry with God that he can’t have whatever he wants, exactly how he wants it.
It’s only in this context that we can understand how to biblically evaluate any policy or candidate for office. The question is, then, which candidate or party most conforms to God’s righteous decree for the civil magistrate? All this rancor over a politician’s personal character while ignoring the much more egregious systemic breaches of God’s law by an institution (the state) is evidence of our confusion and sin. We must repent. We must humble ourselves and turn, not to any political party, but to God and His life giving Word. We must train ourselves up to evaluate everything under the sun according to the life giving principles of holy Scripture.
If we refuse to do this, and insist on living according to our own standards, be sure, our future is a perilous one and we will continue on our drunken path toward an identity-politics/Marxist fueled mash-up.
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