The Bible Doesn't Tell Us to Create Christian Nations?

The Bible, Christian Nations, and the Charge of Unbiblical Politics

All right, everybody. Short video today. I just had this thought a little bit earlier, and I just thought I'd talk about it because I thought it was interesting. You know, one of the things that you hear out there against the idea of striving towards and working towards Christian nations is this idea that the Bible doesn't tell us to do it.

You know, the Bible doesn't say we should be creating Christian nations or having, you know, God's law as the foundation for our law or any of these kinds of things. You know, the Bible just tells us to sit there and suffer and all of that kind of stuff.

And that's sort of like the big, you know, the big thing. This is not biblical what you're what you're going for. And and I just got to tell you, even if I agreed with that, that the Bible doesn't explicitly tell us to create Christian nations, we should do it anyway.

Ordinary Christian Obedience in Personal, Family, and Public Life

Yeah, that's right. You know, because here's the thing. It's like it's like, why wouldn't we do it anyway? You know what I mean? Like the Bible doesn't tell us, you know, that we should brush our teeth in the morning either.

But we should also do that. Here's the thing, like like a righteous life, a righteous person is going to try to to follow the word of God or to honor Christ as Lord. If you want to be more general about it in every area of their life.

And when we're saved by the gospel of Jesus Christ, you know, we repent of our sins and we we we have faith in the Lord. We trust the Lord. We worship the Lord. When we're saved, we don't cease being a person.

Right. In fact, we're actually a truer person, a better person, a more complete person when we're actually not living the lie that we used to live, that God wasn't there and that he wasn't saying things to us.

Right. Like God is there and he's not silent and he's got lots to say. And when we read the Bible, we see there's just so many things that that God is interested in and we don't understand why. Like we're just sitting here and we're just one person in this huge realm that he's built for us.

And, you know, we don't understand why he's so interested in us. We understand that he made us in his image. Why did he do that? Well, we don't really know. But but we know that he's he's concerned with our affairs like he cares what we do and he cares what we do, not just publicly, not just when we're outside in front of everybody, you know, doing things.

But he actually cares what we do privately as well. Like it's not just that he cares about the nations, you know, but he also cares about us individually and the things that we do. And we still have a whole lot of stuff to do just as people that he he has something to say about.

Like like, you know, one of the things I love about Fight Last Feast is that, you know, everybody there understands this, that that he is concerned with and interested in and and has things to say about simple things.

I had a chance to meet with this one guy, a Christian dude, just a just a solid guy who his business is he he makes guitar pedals. And he in fact, I think the band Skillet, it's their signature sound, their signature distortion pedal is one that he created and he manufactures them and sells them.

And he understands that he's doing that. Of course, he's doing it to make a living. He's doing that to feed his family. He's doing that because that's what he loves to do. He's a guitar player himself, but he God is concerned with what he does.

Like he has to operate his business in a Christian way. And that means he doesn't cheat people. That means he doesn't cut corners. That means he doesn't lie in his marketing. I mean, there's a lot of things.

I mean, I'm not going to go through the whole list here, but but he understands that as he does his business. And that's important to God. And so human beings form nations like this is something that human beings do.

Right. We have civil governing authorities and we have that. That's actually a God ordained institution. And so you would think that if God is concerned with how this dude has his guitar pedal business, then and that's not, you know, guitar pedals aren't an institution created by God.

At least I don't think so. I mean, I didn't go to seminary, so I don't know. But if he's concerned with this man's business and how he operates his business, how much more is he concerned with an institution that was his idea, the civil governing authority?

He's concerned with how that operates. And if you read the Bible, you know this because there's first of all, there's a lot of law dedicated to to this. And, you know, as a good Presbyterian, I believe that, you know, we apply the general equity of the law and all of that in the civil governing authority.

But then also you see Proverbs and I read the Proverbs to my kids almost every night. And there's just so much about, you know, righteous rulers and things like that and just the way it operates and bribes and all this kind of stuff.

God is very concerned with how a nation is run. And so as we spread the gospel of Jesus Christ, saving souls from an eternity in hell, converting them to Christ, to trust and honor the Lord and to obey everything he says, that's our commission.

We need to actually do that, to actually, you know, they're converting, being baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, but also learning and teaching others to obey everything Christ commands.

Of course, that would apply to how a nation is run, and it should be explicit in our teaching. And this does not mean that every nation is going to have the exact same law set because not every nation has the exact same context.

It does not mean that every nation is going to have the exact same traditions because not every nation has the same culture, the same tradition base that we're working from. But what it does mean is that every Christian should be working towards, in every area of their life, a situation that is operating more Christianly than it used to operate.

That means your personal life, and obviously that's where you should dedicate a lot of your time because you're always living with yourself. Your family life obviously gets a lot of attention as well because that should be your primary concern after yourself.

Your church life, your community, but also your nation, right? You should be thinking about these kinds of things and doing things that will, you know, lead down the line to a nation that is operating more Christianly today than it did yesterday, more Christianly tomorrow than it does today.

Why a Secular Nation Is Not a Neutral Option

This is something we don't need explicit commands to do. It should be obvious if a person is being honest about what a human being is, what man is, what God created man to be. And then we think, well, there's really only a couple options here.

We can do this in a way that honors Christ as Lord, or we can do this in a way that honors something else as Lord. It is obvious that we should be working towards a Christian nation as opposed to a secular one.

A secular one is full of injustice automatically. That is just the way it works. God didn't give us another option. A secular, liberal paradise is no paradise. It is a hell. And so this is something that we, it's pretty simple, but, you know, we don't need it.

By the way, again, I don't grant for a second that we don't have an explicit command for this. But even if we didn't, we should be doing it anyway if we are truly converted to Christ, if we are truly seeking to honor Christ as Lord in every area of our life.

That includes the political areas that we have participated. And look, this looks different for different people. Because some of us are simply regular people with our lunch pail. We go to work every day.

We vote. We go to our, you know, meetings and whatever, whatever it is that you do, that's going to look differently for you than it will for a Christian who finds himself as the police chief. Or a Christian that finds himself as the mayor or a state senator or a governor or, God willing, one day a true Christian who seeks to honor Christ as Lord in the nation as the president, excuse me, as the president of the United States.

That would be really something. That would be really something. And I think a lot of people, what they've done is that they've basically determined that everything, like a Christian's life revolves around the worship service on Sunday, like church proper in that sense.

And so is it the focus of the church, worships on Sunday, to be moving the political needle? No, that's not the purpose of that time. But again, like a Christian, yes, you know, you ought to be a member of the church and you are the church.

You're the congregation. You're the assembly. But a Christian doesn't cease being a person. A Christian changes how they're a person, right? And so they're still engaged in economic activity. And when you become a Christian, the way you engage in economic activity should be different than the standard pagan.

It should be more explicitly Christian. You should be having in mind, what would Christ have me do today in my business? That doesn't mean you don't look for profit. That doesn't mean you don't seek after a successful business, but you do it in a way that's Christian.

And it's the same thing with politics. Like we can't say, oh, this is not the mission of the church. Unless we're being very particular about like worship service on Sunday or like church officers activity or things like that, I guess I could see your point.

But it's kind of a pointless point because, okay, fine. But Christians in the church are also engaging in all these other things, including the political, which, again, this is an institution of God. The Bible says that the civil governing authority is a deacon of God.

Its purpose is to execute God's vengeance upon the evildoer. Why would we not want something that God intends to execute his vengeance? Why would we not want that institution to do it in an explicitly Christian way?

If you're a Christian and you don't want the civil governing authority, the deacon of God, to be operating according to God's principles, according to God's commands, to view itself as an underling of God.

It's a servant of God. It's a conduit, really, of what God is doing in our world. If you're a Christian and you don't want them doing that in a Christian way, setting apart Christ as Lord, that's foolish.

You are a fool if you don't want that. And I'm not saying that you think, okay, well, we should just give them all the authority to manage the church and stuff like that today in 2023. Look, nobody's stupid on the Christian nationalist side.

We obviously understand that we need to be prudent about a lot of this stuff, too. But we have to think about the end goals here, because the truth is that you hit what you aim for. You hit what you aim for.

God's Blessings, Idolatry, and the Example of James Coates

And I, for one, want our nation to have God's blessings. You know, you look in the Old Testament, and God caused Israel to lose in battles and in wars and in situations, economic situations and things like that, because of their unfaithfulness, because they decided to worship idols instead of Him.

And what that means is that they obeyed and served and considered what idols had to say next to what Christ had to say, what He said, Yahweh. And He caused them to have no success because of that. That's not what I want for my nation.

And I think that if you're a Christian, the only position that makes sense is that wouldn't be what you want for your nation. Look, Israel is going to not meet success. I'm not saying in this current war, this current battle, they're going to fall.

But I wouldn't be surprised if they did, because they are absolute idolaters. And we already know how God acts with idolatrous nations, because God tells us exactly how He acts with those kinds of nations.

And it's going to happen again. And so, yeah, we don't need an explicit command to Christianize the nations, to have the nation operate in a Christian way. We don't need to have it. Even if you think we don't have it, it doesn't matter.

We should do it anyway. Because I'll tell you right now, God is not going to be—. Like, this is the thing. There's kind of an unspoken assumption there that because God didn't explicitly command us to have Christian nations, the unspoken kind of argument there is, but He does command us to not have Christian nations.

The only thing we're to do is to just suffer in silence, and that's not true. Or maybe not in silence, but just suffer through the injustice. That's not true. That's not true. God has not commanded us to forfeit one of His institutions that He set up to the pagans.

That's insane if you think that. He has not commanded that. I think if they said that unspoken assumption, more people would see through the insanity for what it is. Look, if you have to suffer, you suffer for the Lord.

I think of James Coates and his family. They did the right thing in Canada, and that was good that he decided to stand up, and he was counted worthy to suffer for the name, and that is a beautiful thing.

How much better would it have been for Canada if they never did the things that they were doing to the church? That would be better for Canada, morally better. I'm not saying God can't use James Coates to reap a big harvest and to make big moves.

Of course He can, and He does that kind of stuff all the time. I'm talking morally for the people of Canada, though. What they should have done was not to have imprisoned James Coates. That would have been better for Canada had they not done that.

That's the thing, guys. That's the thing. I don't believe that God has not commanded us to Christianize the nations. I think He most certainly has explicitly done so. But even if He didn't, we should do it anyway.