As seen in Genesis 9:5-6, after the flood, God reconstituted the creation order in light of the entrance of sin into the world. This is the first introduction of political responsibility and political force to society. The world lived in anarchy between the Fall and the flood. So, when God wiped the earth clean, he immediately instituted new law and order.

This law is the greatest punishment (death) for the greatest crime (murder), otherwise known as the death penalty. Once this is installed, it creates an opening and a system that allows for lesser punishments on lesser crimes, which we see throughout the books of Moses. Even after laws are given, we see the struggle of societies against lawlessness. The last half of the book of Judges shows how Israel struggled without civil leaders and the book concludes with this statement: “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.”

Today we could say “There is no righteous president in America. Everyone does what is righteous in his own eyes.” This political theology continues from the Old Testament into the New Testament and Paul gives us the clearest outline of the government’s purpose in Romans 13. What we see in Romans 13 is that the government must obey God because it is his civil servant, and any act that goes beyond the bounds of its authority is illegitimate.

It is important to note who Paul is writing to in Romans. One of the most well-known verses in the letter is Romans 10:9, “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” That is a wonderful verse, but because we often don’t fully grasp the context of it, we don’t understand the full weight of it. The Roman church was under extreme persecution at the time this letter was written. Roman authorities would round up Christians in the street and place them in a single file line. Then they would go down the line commanding the Christians to confess “Caesar is lord.” This wasn’t merely a confession of allegiance to the State like the “Pledge of Allegiance,” it was a rejection of Christ in favor of the State. The professing Christians who said Caesar is lord were allowed to leave and the ones who refused were killed. The Christians Paul is writing to have seen their church members murdered. These are the people he tells: “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities” (Rom. 13:1a).

Every believer must be in subjection to their governing authorities. In other words, Christians must be in obedience to the government. The reason for that is: “For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God” (Rom. 13:1b).

God is the ultimate authority. God is also sovereign over all things. Therefore, anyone who possesses earthly authority has received that authority from God and has been intentionally placed there by him. All authority comes from God and any authority figure that exists does so because God has placed them there in his sovereignty. Because of that: “Therefore, whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment” (Rom. 13:2).

Everyone should be obedient to earthly authorities because all earthly authorities receive their power from God. So, disobedience to earthly authority is, in effect, disobedience to God’s authority. It is a rebellion against God to rebel against his authority figures. God often uses these civil authorities to accomplish his will in the Bible.

As we see in Isaiah 10:5-7, “Woe to Assyria, the rod of my anger; the staff in their hands is my fury! Against a godless nation I send him, and against the people of my wrath I command him, to take spoil and seize plunder, and to tread them down like the mire of the streets. But he does not so intend, and his heart does not so think; but it is in his heart to destroy, and to cut off nations not a few”

In this text, God has sent Assyria to take spoil and seize plunder in the nation of Israel as an act of judgment. However, the Assyrian king does not intend to do the will of God. The heart of the king only desires to destroy other nations for the sake of his own glory. Yet, the staff in the king’s hands is the fury of God. In other words, the Assyrian king is God’s civil servant.

There are many other examples we can turn to, but I think you get the picture: the government is God’s institution. The only question left is, “If God has created the government, what has he created it to do?” That’s what Paul outlines in the next two verses: “For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer” (Rom. 13:3-4).

This is the Bible’s clearest testimony to what a properly ordered government looks like. God created the government to maintain a moral society in a fallen world. It is God’s vessel of earthly justice. The government is supposed to reward good, and we should seek the approval of the government for our good actions because the State exists for the good of mankind. They are supposed to preserve the good moral order of God, and the way that they do this is through legislation that punishes evil.

This is the same principle that we saw in Genesis 9. The reason God gave Moses the death penalty is to preserve human life by punishing evil. In the same way God gave the government to us in order to preserve a moral consensus in society by punishing evil. When we look at all of this it’s clear that the government serves a good purpose. In other words, the State is God’s servant.

So, should the government obey God? The answer is simple. A servant must obey his master. As pastor Doug Wilson has noted, “if there is no God above the State, then the State becomes god.” This doesn’t mean that the State becomes God in a literal sense.

It means that if the State does not recognize the fact that their authority is granted to them by God, then they operate as if their authority is inherent to them. The problem with that is: if their authority is inherent to them and not given to them, then there is no one they must answer to and they function like their own gods. A servant who does not obey his master is no servant at all; he is a self-pleasing idolater. Therefore, the State is obligated to maintain a moral society through legislation that is pleasing to God and within the bounds that he has designed it to legislate. So, yes, the State should obey God, and not only should they obey God, but they will also be held accountable for their failure to obey God. If the purpose of the government is to reward good and punish evil, then they must have some standard by which they define these terms, and the only way that the government can determine what is good and what is evil is by the law of God.

So, What should the government legislate? God created man with three relationships: relation to God, relation to each other, and relation to nature. The government cannot legislate an individual’s relationship to God. They could fabricate a perceived relationship, but they cannot truly legislate it. However, the government can and must legislate man’s relationship with each other.

How should they do that? I’m going to argue that the government should look at the Old Testament law as the guide in how to legislate a moral society. The Westminster Confession of Faith summarizes this system well: “To them also, as a body politic, He gave sundry judicial laws, which expired together with the State of that people; not obliging under any now, further than the general equity thereof may require.” (WCF 19.4)

That’s a lot of theological words to say this: God gave the judicial laws in the Mosaic covenant to govern the nation of Israel. When the covenant was fulfilled in Christ, the laws were fulfilled in Christ. However, they weren’t merely fulfilled, they were also transformed in their application. Modern governments are not under obligation to Israel’s judicial law, but there is a general equity of the law that governments should use as their guiding principle in determining what is good and what is evil. For example: Deuteronomy 22:8 states, “When you build a new house, you shall make a parapet for your roof, that you may not bring the guilt of blood upon your house, if anyone should fall from it.” In Israel, it was a common practice for people to go out on their roofs (which were flat) in the evening to cool off and relax. The problem with that is when someone slips and falls off of a roof it hurts. So, they were required to build a parapet (fence) around the edge of their roofs to prevent people from falling off.

It would be ridiculous for the American government to require individuals to build fences around their roofs in a country with sloped roofs that no one walks on. However, the general principle of the law is that individuals are responsible for what happens inside their homes and for what happens to their guests they have invited inside their homes. This is an appropriate application of the principle of law. This is what it means for the Law to serve as our legislative guide.

There are undoubtedly many objections to this political system. I will respond to three of them below.

1. “Separation of Church and State”

First, it should be noted that this is not written in a single piece of legislation in the United States. It was written by Jefferson in a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association. The association was concerned that the government would begin impeding in their church functions, so Jefferson wrote to assure them that the government would not step into the pulpit. The phrase was intended to be a limiter for the State, not the Church. At the same time, we’re not advocating for a church-run state. We’re advocating for a properly ordered relationship between the Church and State where the Church informs the State on what is moral, but does not dictate to the State what they must do.

Jefferson’s statement is also not the separation of morality and State. This is a separation of jurisdiction, not a separation of influence. You can separate church and state the same way you separate apples and oranges. They are different institutions, and they have different roles just like apples and oranges are different fruits that offer different nutrients. However, to imply that we should separate morality and state would be to say we should separate red from apple. It’s an incoherent idea. All morality is inherently religious because it will either appeal to an external standard or it will eat itself. Therefore, the State must have some religious foundation in order to produce a moral consensus.

There’s also a difference between what the Church legislates and what the State legislates. The Church legislates sins; the government legislates crimes. All crimes are sins, but not all sins are crimes. The government shouldn’t attempt to legislate something they don’t have the ability to control, but they should punish all sins that violate man’s responsibility to each other.

My last response to the issue of separation of Church and State is this: As it has been said before, if the government doesn’t want Christ proclaimed in the public square, then they shouldn’t have crucified him in the public square.

2. “This would oppress non-Christians”

Unbelievers would have more freedom under a State that rules as God intended than every citizen does under our current State. If you think I’m exaggerating, try to build a house in the city limits and when the zoning police show up, you’ll find out exactly how much power the government has over you. This political system would prevent government overreach rather than promote it because it constrains the State to function within its designated bounds of authority.

Under this governing system you would experience the freedom that our ancestors fought wars over. A government that follows the general equity of God’s Law wouldn’t use your taxes to fund operations beyond the bounds of their authority because to do so would be theft. The government wouldn’t steal more of your money than you give to God’s Church. The government wouldn’t subsidize murder under the banner of women’s health care. The government wouldn’t fund genital mutilating operations in other countries under the banner of affirming care. Instead, the government would produce a prosperous world because it is following God’s good design for culture and society. God made man to be free creatures to be free creatures who function within his order that produces prosperity. A government that punishes evil and rewards good like it is supposed to will produce the freest people the world has ever known.

3. Jesus said “My kingdom is not of this world”

This objection says that we are attempting to do what only God can do by initiating the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom is a spiritual Kingdom, and this political system tries to turn the spiritual into the physical by forcing religion on people.

Let me be clear: I do not think that a government using the Mosaic Law as its guiding principle in legislation is instituting the Kingdom of God in America. We are saying that the government should determine what is good and what is evil based on what God has said is good and evil and they should refer to his previous judicial system to understand how he intends for that to be done. Under this system we aren’t forcing non-Christians to behave like Christians. We are preventing everyone from behaving like degenerates.

As we form our political theology, we have to guard ourselves from making an idol of the government. If your life is marked more by your voting than your worship, you treat the State like your god. We give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar. Our money has Caesar’s image on it, so we pay him his due taxes. We and our children have God’s image on us, so we don’t give ourselves over to Caesar. Chris is Lord, Caesar is not, and Christ’s call to his brothers and sisters is to engage Caesar without becoming Romans. May the Lord bring our government to repentance and grant us leaders who obey him by rewarding good and terrorizing evildoers.