Obeying the State

These notes supplement the Season 2 Episode 1 podcast called “Has COVD killed the Church?” They are really just a set of rough notes on the topic of obedience to the State. They reflect the author’s personal opinions and should not be linked to the policies or views of any church or Christian organisation

The Christian’s Relationship to the State

Christians are not political insurrectionists. We aren’t Marxist revolutionaries who use physical force to tear down the structures of oppression or injustice. 

Our Lord famously said: “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s”. Crucially, in His conversation with Pontius Pilate, the Lord said “My Kingdom is not of this world, otherwise my servants would fight”. 

Romans 13:1 plainly says: “Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God.” 1 Peter 2:13 explains: “Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every authority instituted among men”. Now the Apostles placed no caveats on their instructions, and remember they were writing to people who would suffer under Nero.

Now that does not mean that we should withdraw from society and cover our eyes from the bad decisions political leaders take. Christians should not be silent in the face of evil. Sometimes we must speak truth to power. We can submit to governing authorities and still speak out against what is wrong. The moment when John the Baptist confronts King Herod is a good illustration of that principle.

Our main job in relation to the State is to pray for our rulers so that people can live quiet and Godly lives (2 Timothy).

Now there are some really difficult cases that Christians have to think through in extreme circumstances when a State has collapsed into anarchy, or when an evil occupying Power has rolled its tanks into a stable and peaceful nation. But we need concern ourselves with those exceptions here.

 Why the Christian Position is important

We live in a culture that reduces everything to power. All of life is boiled down to a political struggle between oppressors and victims. So most non-Christians today, when they see Christians in the public square, automatically assume that the Christians are making a power play, that we are trying to defend our historical rights and privileges. So they will not examine our Truth claims. A policy of non-retaliation is the only way for people who reduce everything to power to encounter Truth. That is Peter’s main argument in his first epistle.

This debate came up in the COVID crisis when a famous pastor in the US called John MacArthur encouraged Christians to disobey the State, and meet together. I have to say that his contribution made me really uneasy. Just think of the impact of that statement on the Chinese Government. They have this paranoid fear that Christianity represents a threat to the wellbeing of the State, that Christians are basically insurrectionists. Now if they got to hear John MacArthur’s statements, their fears would be increased, and so the lives of our brothers and sisters in Christ would become even harder in China. So it is important that we never forget to show that we want to be good citizens in a society, that we aren’t just another political lobbying group making a power play. That sort of attitude will only make life difficult for other Christians – either Christians in the Global South, or the Christians of future generations who will experience a “pay back” moment in the decades that lie ahead.

 An Important Distinction

The New Testament is crystal clear that we should obey the State. But the obvious question arises: how do we square their clear instructions with Peter’s equally clear principle that we should obey God rather than man? 

There is an important difference between disagreeing with the State and leading a rebellion against the State. John Bunyan, the renowned 17th century pastor, refused orders from the Government to stop preaching. He was imprisoned for many years. Bunyan said of his nonviolent resistance: “where I cannot obey my rulers actively, there I am willing to lie down and to suffer what they shall do unto me.”

Imagine that the present-day Government makes it illegal to teach the Bible’s view of human sexuality in a public meeting of the church. I would courteously refuse to obey that law, but when the Police came to arrest me, I would recognise their God-given right to punish me for breaking the law. In other words, I wouldn’t loot shops or start a movement to overthrow the Government. I would simply not comply and then recognise the State’s right to punish me.

So there is an important distinction to be drawn between peaceful non-compliance and insurrectionism. 

Knowing when to resist and when to negotiate

There are clearly times when we can accept restrictions placed on us by the State, and times when we must adopt a policy of peaceful non-compliance. For example, the recent Charities Commission has placed a not-insubstantial administrative burden on churches. But all of us shrugged our shoulders and did what we were told. The key question here is, what are we prepared to die for?

The book of Daniel is really helpful here. In Chapter 1, Daniel is confronted with a problem when he is instructed to eat meat offered to idols. That violated his conscience, so he came up with an imaginative compromise with the State. But in Chapter 6, in the story of the den of lions, Daniel refuses to compromise. He is prepared to die because at that point in the story, the State was seeking to stop him from worshipping God. And that was a non-negotiable principle for Daniel.

Now the State tried to stop him from worshipping as an individual. It was invading the privacy of his personal and thought life. I don’t think the closing of church buildings falls into that category. The Early Church, after all, became very skilled at meeting in homes during periods of time when they were hunted down by State officials. 

Christians who argue vociferously in the political sphere for their historic rights should remember that we follow a Man who was crucified by the State. We have all the rights of a crucified man.

Jim Crookes, September 2020.