Politics and Taxes are Issues for Christians

AD Robles

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I wanted to do a quick video about a topic, it's sort of related to the social justice stuff, but it's a topic that a lot of people that would generally agree with me on this issue actually don't agree with me.

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And that's totally fine. I don't think you're stupid, I don't think you're evil, I think you're wrong, but that's okay. And it's this idea of Christian's involvement with justice, and Christian's involvement with government and politics and things like that.

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And I actually had a brother on Facebook tell me that, you know, first of all, I posted about how

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God hates all of these kinds of taxes, these progressive tax rates and property taxes and inheritance taxes.

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And I fully believe that God hates that kind of stuff. And he said, well, discussions about this are below a

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Christian's calling. It's almost like it's too dirty for a Christian to get involved with, that we have a higher calling to preach the gospel and this and that.

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And I believe that preaching the gospel is a higher calling. I don't think that that's wrong, but I don't agree with him that talking about this and advocating for more just systems of government or systems of taxation is below a

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Christian. I think it's exactly the purview of a Christian. In fact, the Bible says that the saints will judge the world.

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And so I believe fully that the saints should be practicing now because we will be judging the world, we'll be intimately involved at every level of government.

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And so we should probably think about what that would look like, what a just system of taxation would look like. And so, you know, one of the things that I, that I get told a lot is that Jesus never talked about this.

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And so therefore we shouldn't, or none of the, none of the apostles talked about this stuff and they lived under this oppressive

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Roman government. And therefore we shouldn't talk about it either as, you know, using them as an example. And the fact is that's just not true.

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It's just not true. Jesus, you know, obviously had a mission that was very different.

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He didn't, he didn't come to specifically on his own, take the, take the crown at that time.

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He was going to take the crown, but that's not why he came to the world. He came to the world to die for the sins of his people, to save his people.

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He came to the world to bear witness to the truth and the truth is God's word. And so that's what

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Jesus was doing. And so, but, but Jesus did talk about this kind of stuff. In fact, when he was before Pilate, you know, he wasn't trying to get out of being crucified, but Pilate is talking to him and he's questioning him and, and, and he says, you're not going to talk to me, you know, cause

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Jesus didn't say anything again, he was going to keep his mouth shut and he was going to go to the cross. But Jesus turns to him and he says, you would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given you from above.

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And so he's saying, Pilate, you have authority over me in this instance. You're the judge, right?

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But you would have no authority over me unless God gave it to you. Jesus is

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God. So he's talking about himself here. Um, Jesus willingly, Pilate had no real authority over Jesus.

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Jesus has the ultimate authority, but he was willingly giving himself up here. But the reality is Jesus is saying that, that politicians and government authorities is real, but only because God gave them that authority.

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Paul says the same thing. He says, let every person, and he got this from Christ, obviously, let every person be subject to the governing authorities for there is no authority except from God and those that exist have been instituted by God.

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Now if you take a step back and think about what that means for a second, then that means that anything that the government does that is not allowed via scripture.

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So let's say the government said, you know what? We're going to make a new rule. And what this rule says is that there's going to be no longer a punishment for rape.

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We're not going to punish men for rape anymore. In fact, we're going to reward it. We're going to say that if you rape somebody, then you're going to get a reward.

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That was, that's a crazy example, right? I mean, obviously people would rebel against that, but let's just say the government did something like that, or we'll give you a slap on the wrist.

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You know, boys will be boys after all. If the government did that, do they have the authority to do that?

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I think the way some people read Romans 13 is that God gives the government governing authorities authority, and so they can kind of do whatever they want because God gave him that authority.

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And that's not the reality. A governing, a government or a politician or a judge only has the authority to do that, which

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God gave him authority to. God never said that a rapist should go unpunished or should go with a slap on the wrist.

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In fact, God said that a rapist should be executed. That's the, that's the penalty for rape according to God's economy.

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And so any, any, any government official who says that the penalty for rape should be anything besides that is usurping authority.

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They're actually abusing the authority that God gave them. In other words, they do not have the authority to make up whatever law they want.

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They only have authority that they've been given from God and God only gave the authority to do certain things.

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And so that's why taxation as certain kinds of taxation are evil in God's site site because God didn't give the government the authority to tax your income.

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God did not give any governor governor the authority to tax your inheritance.

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God gave governors an authority for a head tax, a very small tax that everyone pays the same whether you're poor or rich.

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That's the only authority God gave governors in terms of taxes. So if any, if any governor or president or, or senator or whatever is, is advocating for something else, they're usurping the authority instead of submitting to God's authority.

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Do you see the difference? So the government, just because Romans 13 exists doesn't mean that this is how people abuse it.

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Romans 13 means the government can do anything they want because the authority comes from God. No, God only gives certain authority.

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And as a servant of the Lord, which Romans 13 also says, you need to say, well,

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I'm going to go, I'm under God. And so I have to listen to God and how I govern. I don't just get to do whatever

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I want. That would be usurption. The other thing is, you know, like I said, um, there's, there's certain examples that people use and they say, well,

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God, Jesus never talked about this. In fact, uh, if this is wrong, sorry, but somebody said, John MacArthur said something that we shouldn't expect our politicians to be moral authorities.

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And I just don't think that's the case. In fact, uh, the morality of a, of a governor, that's one of the primary qualifications of someone that should be in leadership.

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In fact, if you look at, um, Luke chapter three, John the baptizer, which

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I think Jesus, you know, really basically said, look, this guy gets it. John the baptizer gets it.

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He understands this stuff. You know, John the baptizer confronted, uh,

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Herod and he said, look, you know, Herod, you can't just do whatever you want. You're in, you're in sin with this adultery.

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Now that was a governor. He respected and was, and recognized that he had legitimate authority.

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But at the same time, he did expect him to uphold God's standard of morality. And we should too.

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I mean, look, Herod wasn't someone that they voted for. And so, you know, whatever, you know, you could advocate to vote for him or not.

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It wasn't like that back then, but here we have the ability to advocate and vote for certain people. And I think we should hold them to a very high standard.

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They must fear the Lord. That doesn't mean that they need to be perfect, right? But it does mean they can't flaunt this evil.

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They can't flaunt, uh, this, these moral deficiencies and, and call things that are morally bad, morally good.

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We shouldn't vote for somebody like that. That's just my opinion. Um, but I'm pretty sure I can back it up from scripture.

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I mean, again, John the baptizer got it. And yet Jesus says that he, um, you know, uh, or I'm sorry that yet the

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Bible says that he confronted Herod because he was, uh, having sex with his brother's wife.

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You know what I mean? Um, here's the other example I wanted to use. I wanted to use the example of Paul and Paul, you know, he preached the gospel and there's not a lot of record of him confronting politicians or governors, but there is a record of him doing that.

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This is him talking to Felix, right? This is him talking to Felix. And what does it say that he talks to Felix about?

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You see what I'm saying? So, so Felix asks him, he says, you know, you tell me about this gospel of yours, right?

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Tell me about this gospel. And, um, let me, let's see here.

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So Paul talks to him, Paul talks to him about the gospel. He talks to him and his wife about the gospel. This is governor

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Felix is the politician. And what does it say? He talks to him about, talks to him about faith in Jesus Christ.

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So there's the gospel right there. Then he talks to him about three things, righteousness, self -control, and the judgment to come.

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Paul said, you're a governor. You need to be concerned with your moral character. You need to be concerned with righteousness or justice.

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And God defines it. What do you think he was talking about when he talked to him about righteousness and self -control? He's talking about the law of God.

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God always, or Paul always talked about righteousness in terms of the law of God, self -control in terms of the law of God.

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And so again, not only does John the Baptist do this when he has the opportunity, talking to Herod and confronting him about his sin, but also

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Paul, the apostle does this. He, when he has the opportunity, it doesn't mean he's rebelling, right? Like here's the thing.

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A lot of people say, well, why didn't Jesus told you not to pay taxes? Well look, because God, Jesus is not in favor of rebellion.

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Jesus is not in favor of a revolution. Neither am I. I pay my taxes and I recommend that you guys pay your taxes.

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However, I do recognize that the taxes I pay are unjust. I shouldn't have to pay them. I do it because I'm not a revolutionary.

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But the reality is if I have the opportunity to have an influence on what our tax system looks like, I'm going to influence it to towards more, something more godly.

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And you should too, as a Christian, you should too, as a Christian, not saying rebel. I'm not saying this should take over your whole life.

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I'm not saying this would be the most important thing that you should ever do. But the reality is God cares about this. In fact, one of the reasons he saved his people from Israel, one of the complaints that they had was they had ridiculous tax burdens.

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And guess what? The Israelites ridiculous tax burdens were way less than our ridiculous tax burdens.

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So anyway, that's just something I wanted to say. I hope that was easy to follow. You might not still agree with me and that's okay.

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But the reality is that Jesus absolutely, absolutely recognizes that the governing authorities get their authority from God.

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They get it from Christ. And there's a standard there. And so if they do something outside of that standard, they're acting on their own.

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They're usurping authority where it doesn't exist. And so I'm not saying rebel or have a revolt or anything like that.

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But what I am saying is that we can advocate for justice and we should because the examples that we have in scripture, they do do that.

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Look, the people, every apostle didn't have the opportunity to do this. Paul didn't always have the opportunity to do this.

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But when he had the opportunity, when a governor came to him and said, hey, tell me about this Christ of yours, he absolutely went there and we should too.

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We have, look, some of us have bigger platforms. Some of us don't, and I'm not saying everyone has to do it the same way, but when we have the opportunity, we absolutely better advocate for God's law and God's justice.

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My beef with the social justice warriors is not that they advocate for justice. My beef with the social justice warriors is, is that like Pharisees, they're making up their own version of justice and passing it off as godly.

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That's my beef with them. I would join them if they started defining terms, justice, righteousness, if they started defining these things according to scripture, if they started to find their engagement in politics, according to scripture,

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I would join them. And it's just that simple. Anyway, I hope this was helpful. God bless.

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Psalm two is one of my favorite Psalms of all time. And I, you know, I love it very, very much for a lot of different reasons.

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One reason I love it is because it talks about how, um, the Lord laughs at people who try to rebel against him, laughs at the nations who hate him and try to avoid, uh, ruling in terms of his law.

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He laughs at them. That's, that's our Lord. And I love that. And then I love the warning at the end, this, we need to take care and listen to this therefore

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Oh King. So he might as well be talking to president Trump. He might as well be talking to all of our politicians. Therefore Oh Kings, be wise and be warned or rulers of the earth.

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Serve the Lord with fear, rejoice with trembling, kiss the sun.

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In other words, do homage to the sun. You serve under Jesus. You serve under him. And you need to do it the way he says, lest he be angry with you and you perish in the way because his wrath is quickly kindled.

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Blessed are all those who take refuge at him. I love that. And so if you don't think politicians need to rule according to God's standards, then see how you could understand