A few days ago in Vancouver police went to a church to order it to shut down. They were gathering illegally, the police said, due to health restrictions in the pandemic era. The pastor told them to leave and refused to comply, which has caused some to wonder if he was right or not. Well, biblically speaking, the state has no right to command the church not to follow the commandment of the Lord. When the state commands the church to disobey God, it must disobey the state.
Let us first say with absolute certainty that the Lord has both established the civil authorities and commanded that we obey them. Our clearest example of this is how the Lord himself is respectful to Pilate, despite that man having been quite guilty of using his God-given authority for clear evil in the past. On one occasion recorded in Luke 13, Pilate had ordered that certain Galileans be murdered as they offered their sacrifices in Jerusalem. The lesson is clear: Jesus acknowledges that Pilate has authority and that the authority comes from the Father. He is respectful despite the tyranny of the man. But He also informs Pilate that he too is under God’s authority – yes, even the wicked Roman ruler.
To this end, Christians ought always to be known for their obedience to the Lord Jesus Christ and for their respectful conduct toward secular rulers. We aren’t to act shamefully or belligerently toward them. True, we must, due to the presence of sin in the world, often times preach repentance to the civil magistrate. We must often remind the rulers that their rule is a derivative one meant to serve the Lord. It’s a great shame upon Christians when they speak abusively of any ruler. It’s a greater shame, though, even treason, when the professing Christian grants to the secular ruler powers only owned by God.
In light of this, the past year has proven how little regard the church and average church-goer has for the kingship of Jesus Christ. As we celebrated Easter morning, and collectively reveled in the knowledge of the resurrection, there was, sadly, little said about the ramifications of the Lord’s rising. You see, Jesus Christ is often seen in America as a cosmic Santa Claus, a benign and grandfatherly hair-model with perfect skin and blue eyes who loves us and never asks us for hard things – and certainly not righteous living.
This is not the biblical Jesus, however. Jesus Christ is the Lord of all. The New Testament tell us unequivocally that He’s the Lord of Glory, the great King and it’s our duty to submit to Him in all things. He did not rise to appease us but to transform and save us. We aren’t called to assent to His Lordship on Sunday morning and then be a ward of the state the rest of the week. We are temples of the living God living amidst a rebellious and fallen world. He calls us “friends” if we keep His commandments (John 15:16). The word used for friends in the Greek is philos. When used by a monarch it means that we’re literally princes of grace. All whom a king would make a friend he also appoints to the status of prince of the royal court. In other words, a faithful Christian is a royal prince or princess in the royal/holy family. This same word, incidentally, is used as princes in the Septuagint version of Esther 1:16.
Paul also calls us “ambassadors” of Christ (2 Corinthians 5:20). This is another amazing truth that’s ignored and/or unknown to many modern Christians.
In every country there are places called embassies. If an American were to go to the Russian embassy, though he is in America, he is actually on Russian soil and the laws of Russia are dominant there. American law gives way at the foreign embassy. Naturally, the ambassadors of Russia, though in America, are not American and, despite submitting to American law, they aren’t governed by it. An ambassador “submits” to the law out of respect to their own sovereign. They do not, in doing so, renounce their own country’s law. This is what it means to be a Christian who obeys the law. Everyone who calls Jesus Lord is saying that there is no other king, no other deity and no other glory.
The great sin of the Old Testament Israel was something called syncretism, which was the mixing of worldly religions with the true religion of God. The modern church and church-goer is doing the very same thing by assuming that any human entity has lordship over Christ and His royal church. An ambassador of Christ knows that there are no exceptions to the moral authority and Lordship of Jesus Christ. He is “King of kings and Lord of lords. (Revelation 19:16).”
To this end, the idolatry of the state is a grievous evil. States have dared to mandate that churches not hold services due to health mandates. But how can Jesus truly be Lord if the state controls His embassy on earth? Can a state government tell a foreign embassy what to do? It would be an act of war if a state “invaded” the embassy of another nation. When Hanun of Ammon took King David’s embassy and cut off half the beards and part of the garments (exposing their buttocks), David considered it as an act of war (2 Samuel 10:1-14).
The Great Commission is for the faithful to go and make disciples of all nations. We’ve reversed that order in our day and have mindlessly, faithlessly fallen prostrate before the state. Where the church was founded on the courage of its Stephens and Pauls, we’ve got comfortable cowards and traitors who blaspheme the name of the Lord by conceding to false moral and theological leadership from politicians. What is righteous and good? It’s what the Lord commands. We’ve replaced that today with what the majority says, or what’s “lawful”. But law divorced from righteousness is idolatry and tyranny.
The Lord recognized the existence of the state within the fallen world and noted its lust for power (Luke 22:25-30). Yet to that He appointed His church to be servant-leaders in His messianic kingdom (Luke 22:29-30). Jesus Christ did not call us to surrender to Caesar, but to convert him by telling him that his power was given to him by God and that he was using it for sin! In truth, while the Christian can be a subject to a state that’s not Christian, he must see that God commands all to repent. The state, God declares, is His ministry and no authority exists outside of Him. All Christians, as ambassadors of the most-high God, are called to live as royal priests, teaching and preaching the Kingdom of God. We are called, therefore, into opposition to the ways of the world and its claim to moral freedom.
It’s blasphemous for the church to think that the state has control over Christ. His embassy on earth, His church, will obey ungodly rulers because it is His command. We will obey out of respect to Him and to give Him glory. Any demand that the church must be in moral submission to the state or any other authority, though, is clear and unadulterated blasphemy since for any law to be a law it must be a moral law. And there is no moral authority outside of God or else there is no God. When the state or any other entity claims that it is the highest moral order, through any mechanism whatsoever, it is claiming that it’s the lord. To this, real Christians must preach repentance in the name of Christ. Moral law can only be grounded in Scripture and the righteousness of God. If it’s in anything else then that thing must be lord. This is why this issue is of supreme importance. The standard of right-and-wrong through which we judge will show us what we truly worship.
The Lord calls the state to be a “terror to evildoers” and protector of the just. He’s written His moral law on the hearts of all (Romans 2:14-15) and even the state knows this. Christians should preach this truth to all, especially the state, as this is our Commission. To neglect this is to renounce our ambassadorship and to replace God’s moral authority with the state’s is to be a traitor to Christ. And when the state, in sin, tries to write its own moral law, and becomes a terror to good conduct (especially in forbidding worship) it ceases to warrant obedience. God commands that it be a revenger who executes wrath upon him who does evil (Romans 13:4). Modern America lurches along in moral darkness, having divorced law from righteousness because it thinks the state is a law unto itself.
We pray vainly for revival because we pray not for God’s Kingdom to come and for His will to be done on earth as it is in heaven, but for our government to be a little nicer to us or something of that order. We can imagine Isaiah, or any of the prophets, praying that the Lord would bless Israel with lower taxes while keeping the idolatry! That’s the American church today and it’s reprehensible. If revival comes it will start in the barren and apostate churches who worship Caesar instead of Christ and have embraced the state instead of the living Lord. When they repent and again embrace the Lordship of Christ, and Him alone as the supreme authority, then we will have a revival.
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