Explicitly Christian Politics
Post date: Dec 07, 2016 5:4:26 PM
Nov 11, 2010 by Daniel Eby
Nothing on this earth was made apart from Christ.
Christ, the Word, created all things, and nothing that’s been made was made apart from Him. Every aspect of Creation was engineered, designed, and created by Him– and was, in fact, designed by Him also in the way it was to function. He’s not only the Creator and the Sustainer, but the Bible teaches us that He’s the Governor of everything. In fact, the Bible calls Him the “Lord of lords and the King of kings.”
Explicitly Christian politics begins with the presupposition that all rule and authority resides in the person of Jesus Christ. Matthew 28:18 says, “All authority has been given to me, in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore and teach all nations…” This is not limited only to “spiritual” government, as we refer to when we say, “He’s the Lord of my salvation”, or “He is the Lord of my soul,” but He is the Lord of every area of life–all rule and authority over every aspect of life!
Explicitly Christian politics, therefore, acknowledges Christ’s Lordship over the culture, the community, business, economics, and, yes, over politics and civil government.
Politics is “the art and science of civil government.” ‘Science’ encompasses the knowledge and principles of any subject, whereas ‘art’ is the practice of it. Thus, the ’science of politics’ is the knowledge of the principles of civil government, while the ‘art’ is the practice of those principles.
Explicitly Christian politics, therefore, articulates a Christian understanding of how civil government must operate as it follows the Scripture, the teaching of God, or the rules and law of God. It’s “explicitly Christian” in that it follows Christ, and acknowledges the rule of Christ over politics and civil government.
Now for those of us that have been studying Biblical Christianity, and how reformation brings to us the application of the Scripture to all of life, the concept of Christian civil government will not be hard to follow.
The difficulty with the times we live in is that we have separated God from too many areas of our lives. We’ve been guilty of believing in faulty ideas like the separation between sacred and secular, or thinking that the Christian should only focus on such “sacred” things like evangelism, missions, and saving souls for heaven, while leaving the government of the world to unbelievers. We’ve been deceived into believing that the Bible is merely a personal devotional book.
In fact, for perhaps the last hundred years, we’ve considered the Bible merely to be our private devotional book– but not understood that it’s also a book about government! Yet every single book in the Bible says something about government, and teaches how God rules in the nations of the world! The Bible tells us that when the nations of the world obey God, they are blessed; when they disobey, they are cursed, or judged, as Nebuccanezzar was, or the nations in the Old Testament. Israel itself, when it denied the Lord Jesus Christ, was judged in time and history. It actually happens!
Psalm 1 and 2 are great “political Psalms.” Psalm 1:4 teaches that the wicked are like the chaff which the wind drives away. In Washington State, we have a lot of wheat farms. Living here, you can see how the wind blows the chaff and it just flies away! That’s what the wicked will be like. Psalm 1:5 teaches us that the wicked shall not stand in the day of judgment, and Psalm 1:6 teaches that the “wicked shall perish.”
In the Bible, we have so many illustrations of God saying, as it were, “This is exactly how it’s going to be when you do not follow my law, and you walk according to your own wisdom as a person or family or nation. You will be judged; you will be found wanting.”
No wonder the nations of this world, in our time and history, are in such trouble! As R.J. Rushdoony once said, “We malfunction, apart from Him.” We don’t operate right! Another Christian statesmen, from 1847 in the Netherlands, Groen Van Prinster said, “Apart from God, man can only work destruction.” Without God’s wisdom, that’s what happens.
Explicitly Christian politics is a must for the Biblical Christian! All of God’s wisdom is in the Bible. The Bible is the rule book that He has given to mankind—to all men and all nations. “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every Word that precedes from the mouth of God!”