The Contemporary Church is S – Statist
- 17 December 2023
The contemporary Church has made an idol of the State. It pays token tribute to Christ as ‘Lord of all’ on Sunday morning from around 10.30am till 11.45am but then reverts back to its default outlook on Monday morning whereupon Caesar again takes up the reins. Alas, even on Sunday morning, affirmations (sung or muttered) concerning Christ’s kingly status generally connote ‘Jesus is Lord of ALL MY HEART.’ They capitulate, perhaps unwittingly, to the conviction that Christ’s lordship constrains religious concerns only. This much became apparent when in the Spring of 2020 UK State officials, ordered Church closures, the suspension of services of holy communion and the cessation of sung worship. Masked attendance & social distancing became, for far too long, the ridiculous new normal and, in supposed deference to St Paul’s alleged teaching in Romans 13, the ‘sheople’ blithely complied without so much as raising an eyebrow. How did so many ‘Bible believing’ congregations fail to apply the Bible? Had they not been taught that the Scriptures provide God’s wisdom for every circumstance of life (2Tim 3:16)? But for a few principled exceptions, apparently not! What was immediately obvious to all was this: the generality of Christians acted as though Caesar was Lord in the public square however much He was declared to be otherwise in private moments of prayer and worship.
This capitulation to the State by the Church must be reckoned with and vehemently refuted when it so obviously goes against the plain dictates of God’s Word. Let us consider briefly what the Bible teaches regarding the proper bounds of various government structures.
God has decreed for godly jurisdiction to prevail in all sovereign spheres of society. Those spheres, created by God, are (i) Church (ii) Family and (iii) State. Alas, Church shepherds and their thoughtless sheep are much confused concerning how these mutually dependent sovereign spheres collectively participate in the kingdom of God which is advancing through history. Instead of recognising the way each institution interacts harmoniously with the others, they myopically see only the Church[i]. Too many of our brethren in America have conflated ‘separation of Church & State’ with ‘separation between religion & politics’ and paid a very high price for their folly. The founding fathers of the US merely sought to preclude any one denomination from gaining privileged hegemony over others. Significantly, all thirteen originally confederated states manifested a Christian charter.
We should not be surprised to discover the principle of ‘the one and the many’ expressed in everywhere throughout God’s creation: wherever we find it there is an echo of our creatureliness made in the image of God – i.e. the Trinity. Hence, in the family we have Mother & Father; in the Church we have Elder and Deacon, etc; even so, in the Christian State their exists both Civil and Ecclesiastical authority. Let us briefly consult the Scriptures to see the warrant for this:
Moses was notably a judicial leader of Israel; his brother Aaron was allocated an ecclesiastical office. In the monarchical age, Saul, David, Solomon, Joash and Josiah prosecuted their roles as kings – i.e., civil magistrates. By contrast, Ahimelech, Abiatha, Zadok, Jehoiada and Hilkiah performed priestly duties. In the time of the Exile God raised up Nehemiah (civil authority) and Ezra (ecclesiastical authority) as cobelligerents. In Romans 13 Paul describes the civil magistrate as God’s Minister for preserving law and order and for promoting (symbiotically) the free course of the gospel. A Christian State should therefore encourage the Church to preach the gospel of the kingdom (1Tim 2:2). Conversely, the Church is to prophesy to the State requiring that its laws glorify God (Lu 13:32; Lu 3:19; 1Tim 1:8-11).
Both Church and (Christian) State enjoy a God-ordained vocation. The Church exercises a ministry of mercy & rehabilitation; in contrast, the State may act coercively wielding the power of the sword (Rom 13:4) to establish God’s rule of law promoting covenantal equity and justice within the civil sphere.
Accordingly, King Saul was indicted by Samuel for over-stepping the proper bounds of his civil jurisdiction (see 1Sam 15); Jeroboam likewise transgressed by establishing idolatrous state religion in Bethel and Dan by appointing non-Levitical priests in non-designated locations (1Ki 12:25-33); imprudently, good king Uzziah usurped the limits of his authority by burning incense in the temple (2Chron 26:16-21); conversely, Church authorities in the sixteenth century acted politically (i.e. coercively) by ordering the burning of heretics. [In the more principled affair involving John Calvin, it was the Genevan civil magistrate that prosecuted Servetus of blasphemous crimes duly warranting the death penalty].
Before I close, it is necessary to explain a couple of popularly touted proof-texts which allegedly ‘demolish’ all these assertions. First, ‘Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s’ (Mk 12: 17). Here, Jesus is underscoring my point – that Caesar has his lawful jurisdiction by which he legitimately requires taxation; likewise, the Scribes & Pharisees enjoyed the exercise of duly constituted ecclesiastical authority. But here’s the point: both spheres are subordinate to God. Christ is simultaneously Saviour and Judge and is to be recognised by all creaturely subjects. Tyranny results in the unfettered exercise of power; in such circumstances it is right and proper for a ‘lesser magistrate’[ii] to exercise a formal challenge to the powers that be. Second, when Jesus said, ‘My kingdom is not of this world’ (Jn 18:36) He could not have meant that His reign was ‘other worldly’ as is popularly imagined. Rather, in context, His comment references His (& the Father’s) preferred modus operandi. He would not submit to their prognostications; the religious authorities supposed He would meet violence with violence. Jesus’ objectives were undiscerned by His enemies. Kingdom power and glory might choose to exercise restraint and principled submission (see Jn 10:18) to the greater glory of God.
The modern Christian Church fails to comprehend what God has laid bare within His Word – that Jesus is both Saviour of all men (Lu 2:31-32 & 1Tim 4:10) and ‘Ruler over the kings of the Earth (Rev 1:5)’. Abraham Kuyper hit the nail on the head when he wrote, “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!”
[i] In a subsidiary manifestation of this error, they even tyrannise the family unit supposing that Church ‘family’ trumps ordinary blood ties! In doing so they fall prey to Paul’s blistering indictment in 1Tim 5:8.
[ii] See Matt Trewella &/or Vindicae Contra Tyrannos (1579) by Junius Brutus.
