In the second part of this two-part podcast, pastors Derek and Cliff turn to the Bible to discuss how Christians should relate to the government.
Transcript
Derek: Welcome to the With All Wisdom podcast. My name is Derek Brown. I am here today with Cliff McManis. We are both pastors at Creekside Bible Church in Cupertino, California. We’re both pastors of theology at the Cornerstone Bible College and Seminary in Vallejo, California. And here today we are in part two of a series we started last time on how Christians should relate to the government. And in our last episode, we encourage you to check it out at withallwisdom.org. You can listen to that last episode if you haven’t already. In that we talked about how Christians often relate to or engage with the government. We offer two negative extremes, two ways that are not helpful and not biblical. Today we want to speak positively about how Christians should relate to the government. We want to go to the Word of God and think about those things. And so just like last time, I’m going to hand it over to Cliff and have him take it away.
Cliff: So Derek, in answering the question, how should Christians relate to government? In the first episode, I just gave two words to hang our thoughts on, and that was what we shouldn’t do. We shouldn’t reform and reject. We should avoid those two extremes, reform and reject. So I’ve got two words as well this time for the positive side of how we should relate to the government. And instead of reform and reject, my two words are proclaim and pray. So those are the two things I want to talk about.
Derek: Alliteration for both. That’s helpful.
Cliff: Yeah. Beautiful. Proclaim and pray. First, I want to just briefly talk about proclaim, but then spend most of our time on one thing definitely that every Christian should be doing regarding their government at every level is pray. And we’ll look at a key passage that tells us exactly how to do that in 1 Timothy 2. Proclaim and pray. So how should I relate to government? Well, we should be all about proclamation as Christians. There’s kind of two prongs to that, a positive, negative. The proclamation first is the Great Commission. What Jesus told the church, that is your mission. That’s what you do is the Great Commission, and that’s to proclaim the gospel to the world, everybody in the world, to every unbeliever is a candidate to hear the gospel, that proclamation. Of that wonderful message, the message of the gospel, which is good news. It’s how a sinner can be saved by the work of the Savior so that we can be united to God the Creator in a harmonious relationship. And it’s the only solution in the world. It’s through the work and the person of Jesus Christ. And that is the mission of the church. And many times we lose focus of that very simple mission and add other stuff to it. The gospel and social justice and everything else, political activism, but no, it’s sweet and simple. Jesus was clear about it. Matthew 28, Great Commission, proclaim the gospel and make disciples a lifelong quest for every Christian and as a church. So that’s what we do, we proclaim. And that will also be true of government and government officials, because everybody’s a candidate to hear the gospel, receive the gospel. But as we go out and proclaim, it has different effects. There’s the gospel that we proclaim, which means we’re speaking truth. But when we go out into the world and speak truth, not everybody’s going to receive that or welcome that. We will get resistance.
And so part of that resistance is because of sin. People love their sin, Jesus said, in John 3, they don’t love the truth, they love their sin. Therefore, they’re going to resist. They’re going to be hostile. That’ll manifest itself in different ways. They don’t want to turn from their sin. So part of our proclamation, in addition to the good news of how to be saved, is accountability. So accountability does come with its accountability according to the truth of God. That’s John 18. Jesus said he came to bring and manifest truth to the world, because he is the truth. And the church needs to do that. The church is salt and light. Every Christian needs to do that. Now proclaiming, not just the gospel, but bringing truth that bears on the world and is salt and light and brings accountability to the world, and truth brings accountability to political officials. How did our governor in California become governor? That’d be an interesting question just to do a field survey of people in your church one by one. How did the governor become governor? Who put him there? And you’ll get different answers. Because there’s more Democrats than Republicans in California, or he did it through compromise where he paid his way there, or his relatives are in the House of Representatives, or whatever the answer is at a human level. And the answer is, well, God put him there, ultimately. That’s really the ultimate answer. That’s clear from scripture. But as we go out and proclaim truth, that entails accountability. People will resist the truth. So part of that proclamation will be in the form of rebuke, and that will also be rebuke towards our political officials. There are times where we have to call them into accountability as the church or as individual governments. That shouldn’t be a surprise to those who read the Bible, because that’s what godly people and church leaders or religious leaders on behalf of God have been doing all throughout church history in the Old Testament, or the godliest of people or the godliest of God’s leaders confronted the political officials, the pagan, unbelieving, compromised political officials. And they weren’t always pagan, the leaders that had to be confronted. Sometimes they were actually in the theocracy of Israel, where supposedly they believed the Old Testament, whether it was King Manasseh, who was one of the most notorious and wicked kings of all, yet he was supposed to be leading God’s nation, or even King David, who knew God had to be called out. Nathan, the man of God, right? So it’s not just the evil, wicked people like pagan governors of the state of California that need accountability and at times need to be called out with our proclamation of truth. I think of Paul called out political officials with accountability of truth. From when he was on the island of Cyprus, he actually proclaimed the truth to the governor there. And that guy believed, but then when he went to Philippi and ran into those two or three local mayors who put him in jail and whipped him and chained him illegitimately, boy, he gave them a tongue-lashing, and they were afraid of his tongue-lashing. They wanted him to leave town, and then Paul would stand in the face of Festus, the governor, or Felix, the governor, or Agrippa, wanting to appeal to Caesar. He did. He ended up going before the court of Nero, which cost him his life. So it goes with the territory of being a Christian. We are salt and light. Salt and light aren’t necessarily always positive words.
Many times they’re negative in terms of their connotation. As salt, what do we do? We preserve this sinful, corroding society as a preventative measure. And then also, because we’re light, we expose the compromise. We expose the lies, we expose the sin, and you’re going to get a reaction. So that’s one of the ways that the church needs to relate to the government, is hold it accountable. And that has cost Christians and believers their lives all throughout the history of the world. And one pastor was just pointing out, in light of this ministry of the church that we’re supposed to be calling out or proclaiming truth of accountability to political officials and leaders, it’s only recently that the church hasn’t been doing that as a regular ministry mandated by God.
Derek: That’s a good point.
Cliff: It has been neglected in the last hundred or so years, 200 years. So how do we relate to government? Proclamation of the gospel and at times accountability. So that’s one P word, proclaim. But the other way that Christians should relate to the government is pray. So I just want to read this key verse, because this is where I wanted to hunker down and spend most of our time. And it is 1 Timothy 2, 1 through 4, and I’ll just read it, and then a second time I want to walk through it and maybe get some comments from you, Derek, on the commentary of it. There are a couple of phrases in there that are difficult that Christians debate about the interpretation of it. So see if we can come to a meeting of the minds. But Paul says in 1 Timothy 2, by the way, Paul’s writing, this is one of his last epistles. This was probably written in the early 60s. Not long after a 25-year ministry, not long after this, he dies. Ironically, he’s going to probably be executed by Nero, who is the king or the emperor of the Roman Empire, the very emperor that Paul said, I appeal to Caesar. So Paul says in 1 Timothy 2, first of all, then, he’s talking to Christians, I urge you Christians, really, I command you as an apostle on behalf of God. This is a mandate. This is not an option. That in treaties and prayers and petitions and thanksgivings.
So that’s four different words for prayer. I urge you to be praying and pray that prayers be made on behalf of all men or all people. Be praying for all people in various places of society, all kinds of people. Don’t be partial in your prayer life, in other words. Don’t just pray for people you like, people you respect, people you know, people you get along with. It’s easy to pray for them. Derek, who’s it hardest to pray for on a human level, do you think?
Derek: Well, I think, I mean, that’s why Jesus instructed us to pray for our enemies.
Cliff: Yeah, there it is.
Derek: Because I just see this here, prayers intercessions, thanksgiving. I’m not sure the last time I thanked God for some particular governmental leaders who I strongly disagree with. I couldn’t tell you the last time I thanked God for them, and yet I’m commanded to do that.
Cliff: Wow. And how do you do that? So that’s part of what we want to, because Christians are going to be asking the same question you’re asking. How in the world do you pray thanksgiving on behalf of some political official who’s either just given over to the cause of abortion and everything else, and it’s an abomination? So we want to talk about that. So these prayers be made on behalf of all people, and specifically, verse two, for kings. For us today in America, that would be our president. It doesn’t matter who’s in office. I would say, what are we on, how many, is it 45 presidents? Something like that.
Derek: Yeah.
Cliff: If you look at the history of them, how many of our 44 presidents have been born-again Bible-believing Christians? I would say, well, less than five, if any at all.
Derek: If any, yeah.
Cliff: If any. I mean, really, when you study their life, their history, what they believed, maybe two that I can think of out of those 40, whatever. So it doesn’t matter if they’re saved or not. We’re supposed to be praying for our leaders, for kings and all who are in authority. So for us here in America, that’s all the House of Representatives, all the senators, all of our 50 governors, all of our mayors, just everybody who’s in an authoritative position. That’s a lot of praying.
Derek: That is a lot of praying, and I’m rebuked, honestly. I think the sum of my prayers is, Lord, have mercy and give us wise leaders. It doesn’t, it’s not as thorough, you know, walking through these different branches of government and levels of government with supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgiving.
Cliff: This requires homework because then you’ve got to study who your government officials are because it’s not uncommon where you’re talking to just your average Christian, especially younger people, even college grads. Who is the House of Representatives, or I mean, who has the House of Representatives? They don’t know. Who’s the mayor of your city? They don’t know. Who’s the two senators of your state? They don’t know. But Christians should know some of those, you know, priority ones, the main leaders, so they can pray for them.
Derek: That’s interesting you mentioned that because last episode we talked about some who overly engaged in the government, some who completely disengage, and this passage right here would say at least the level of knowing who you’re praying for, Christians should know who their leaders are so you can pray for them. And so in that level, you’ve got to do a little research, you’ve got to do a little homework and figure out who these people are.
Cliff: You’ve got to know who they are. Then you’ve got to do a little more research because you’ve got to know what’s going on so you can pray for them specifically. So you do have to engage at a legitimate level for knowledge. Pray according to knowledge and according to God’s will. Anyway, so we pray for kings, those are the ultimate leaders, and everybody else who’s in authority. In order of that, so here’s the purpose. Why are we praying for these people anyway? What’s the end? This helps inform our prayer specifically. So that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life. So that we may have really peace in society, which makes sense because whoever’s the authority figure at the time, they immediately impact the nature of society, whether it’s chaotic or harmonious, whether it’s peaceful or oppressive, whoever the leaders are. So there’s a direct correlation. So this is completely legitimate. We pray for those who are in authority. By the way, God gave them that authority and then we need to pray for them because they might be prone to abusing that authority. So we want to pray for them that they use God’s authority properly for the purpose of according to this, that we as Christians will have peace in society so that we can lead a tranquil, meaning peaceful and quiet life in all godliness and dignity. So this says a lot about what God expects of Christians, of how they should be citizens and what their reputation should be. Christians shouldn’t have the reputation of being rabble rousers, outright, you know, all they think about are Christians or they’re just protesting all the time with their sign chained to the door of the government building. That’s not Christianity. God is not pleased with that.
Derek: Wow. That’s an amazing statement because, I mean, I’ve recently been engaging with people who are like you explained or described just now, professing Christians who are very much that way. And I think they’re persuaded that they are far more Christian than I am because I’m not doing those kinds of radical exercises. So it’s a good point.
Cliff: Yeah, because part of that salt line or the salt part of us is we’re a preservative to society. So the more Christians you have in a society or city, theoretically, the more resources God has to bring peace to that society, to bring civility, to bring morality, to bring order to that society as God uses his people, who are his ambassadors, who are salt, a preservative to that sinful and perverse society by nature. So this is how we should be praying that we can get leaders in place who will submit to God’s law and do their one thing. By the way, political leaders have just one job. It’s pretty simple, actually, at least the job description, and that is uphold justice. That’s their job. That’s it. Uphold justice. That’s just two things. It’s protect the innocent and punish the wicked. That’s all there is to it. But really, does that happen?
Derek: Yeah.
Cliff: But that’s how we should be praying. If they did do their job, then we would have, Christians would be able to lead a peaceful and quiet life in all godliness. We just want to live in society and be good citizens and being a blessing to whoever we can and preach the gospel and do ministry and not be bothered. And we don’t want to be bothering others either. So that’s the calling of a Christian, kind of like God wants Christians to kind of live under the radar of scandal and drama and the headlines.
Derek: Wow. It’s just amazing. It’s so contrary to some of the things that are being said by some Christians these days.
Cliff: Yeah, absolutely. And peace, I think of during the COVID thing when some of these laws actually were oppressive on the churches and trying to keep us from worshiping, to go to church, to sing in church. Now that’s where government is going, usurping God’s authority.
Derek: Absolutely.
Cliff: They have no right to do that to the church. So we just want a peace and tranquility. We just want to go to worship. We’re not bothering you. And you’re trying to shut our doors and keep us from singing and worshiping our God. So as a result, we did pray. There are a lot of Christians praying, God, change the leaders of the government or whatever. Allow us to just live peaceably so we can worship you, because that’s leading a tranquil and quiet life, in all godliness, in a way that pleases God, and dignity that’s respectable. Verse three, this should be our goal as we’re praying in our living, because this is good and acceptable in the sight of our Savior.
Derek: I’m blown away by what Paul’s talking about here, because you could, if you didn’t read this passage, you could just conclude from Paul’s life and the way he talks about persecution and the way he was persecuted and the way he was bold for the gospel and just went after it, and confronted people and confronted, that you would think that this is kind of a weak way to live, like this is the mediocre Christian life, but he just said this is good and pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, to pray for the societal peace and structure in good government so that we can live in a way that’s quiet, godly, dignified, serving the Lord, serving others, preaching the gospel, preaching the truth, and so I can understand where there are some who maybe tend to gravitate towards that more radical, confrontational approach to the culture and so on, but like you said, it’s almost as though it’s pleasing to the Lord for Christians to live under the radar, to have more of a quietly subversive effect on the culture through the preaching, and you know, we’re not overtaking institutions, we are preaching the gospel, and hearts are being transformed and people are being changed, and then they’re having influence where they’re at, and then they’re, and so.
Cliff: Yeah, no, that’s a good point because this is exhibiting quiet strength, quiet strength, true meekness, and there is an irony there because you read the book of Acts and I can see why Christians with that attitude see that, because literally Paul’s going into some towns and they are calling him a rabble-rouser and troublemaker, like in Thessalonica, and they kicked him out of town, or in Philippi, or when he goes into Jerusalem, they literally said he was stirring up trouble, and that’s why they arrest him. He’s a troublemaker and a rabble-rouser, because he was always in opposition to the government and governing authorities, but that was not his attitude at all, and that was not what he was trying to do, and that didn’t please God. He wasn’t trying to be a rabble-rouser, he was just bringing the truth of the gospel, and they hated it so much, and they loved their sin so much. They were the true rabble-rousers, like in Ephesus, when there was a riot, then they’re trying to blame it on Paul, and it’s like, no, it was the government officials that started the riot. They were the ones who were the rabble-rousers. So Paul’s saying, live in this tranquil life, praying this way to this end, this is good and acceptable to the sight of God our Savior, verse 4, a challenging verse, who desires, this is the will of God, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. So pray for all people, even pray for pagan political rulers and officials so that we can live quietly as Christians, but also related to prayer, this is a soteriological context. Salvation is involved here. So Derek, let me ask you your thoughts on that very difficult passage, or at least verse 4, debate about it, that God desires all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth.
Derek: I think I take this the same way that you do. I take this to not be all people with unqualified, just all people who have ever lived, but all people referring to the all people back in verse 1. So he just said, thanksgiving be made for prayers, supplications, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, and who are they, kings and who are people in high positions, and then he explains why. And this is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved. And so I take that to be all kinds of people. God desires all kinds of people to be saved, and so the implication would be that we want to pray for a kind of way of living so that we can continually share the gospel so that all kinds of people can be saved, and also to pray for those very leaders that are in charge so that they might be saved.
Cliff: Yep, I agree with you. I think it’s all kinds of people, all demographics of people, people from everywhere, from all nations, from all strata of society, even political officials and rulers. I think he specifically mentions that because sometimes it’s hard to believe that some corrupt, immoral, all-powerful, megalomaniac of a leader can actually be saved. I think there’s a lot of Christians that believe that. Oh, I’ll pray for everybody. There’s no way that guy could be saved, and they probably believe that about Nebuchadnezzar because he was one of the worst, one of the most notorious evil, wicked rulers who had power over almost the entire world, and yet God humbled him, and he got saved according to Daniel chapter 4.
Derek: He does, and he says some of the most beautiful, sublime things you can say about God and his sovereignty.
Cliff: It is. It’s incredible, chapter 4. So the worst of the worst can be saved.
Derek: So I’m not sure if you, maybe you meant to do this, but you mentioned Manasseh, who in my judgment was the worst of the worst of, I think even the writer of Chronicles and as well, basically saying that he is the worst of the worst. And I take him to have actually gotten saved as well, that he came, that phrase, he came to know the Lord, which is a phrase that’s used to say that someone has been saved in the Old Testament. He came to know the Lord after all this horrible sin, just being the worst king, the idolatry, that actually he ends up getting saved. The Lord humbles him. He does, Israel has to pay for, they are, they bear with the consequences of Manasseh’s sin and his wickedness, but he himself gets saved. And it’s a remarkable story, but I think we’re given that story and the Nebuchadnezzar story and the Paul story to be encouraged to continue to pray for people who weren’t quite certain they could never get saved. I mean, I think if we were back in the time of Manasseh, we’d be like, there’s no, there is no hope for this man. There’s no hope for Nebuchadnezzar. There’s no hope for Paul. And yet there are now examples of the grace of God.
Cliff: Yeah, I distinctly remember still 35 years ago when I first became a Christian and read the Old Testament for the first time, we got to the story of Manasseh. I was disgusted. I’m thinking top five most wretched people in history. He was there.
Derek: Yeah.
Cliff: And what was also horrible about it, not only his corrupt, perverted nature, was he reigned for 55 years. Can you imagine having somebody as a king for 55 years. And then God humbled him and saved him. Just incredible. So that should give us hope. So I’ve got seven ways that we can pray for political officials.
Derek: Sweet.
Cliff: So I’ll just go through these. Number one, we can pray for their salvation. Do we want the governor of the state of California to be saved? Absolutely. I had a seminary professor actually, Derek, who told the class that we can’t pray for the salvation of individual people. And there was a little debate in class. I raised my hand. We had 42 people in the class. Because of election, we could not pray. And then I brought up First Timothy 2, and they said, no, that’s not what it’s talking about. And then I brought up Romans 10, where Paul said he prayed for the salvation of the Jews who were lost. And he dismissed that one too. Do you think we can pray for the salvation of individual people?
Derek: Absolutely. I would reject that statement by that professor categorically. And I would just encourage our listeners to reject that categorically. You can absolutely pray for people individually, by name, hoping for their salvation.
Cliff: Absolutely. And still believe in election.
Derek: And still believe in election. Because the truth about election is I don’t know who’s elect. That’s one thing I don’t know. And so I’m going to pray for those whom God tells me to pray for.
Cliff: Yep. So number one, how do we pray for our leaders? We pray for their salvation. Number two, we pray for their wisdom and justice. Because God expects them, book of Proverbs, they need to rule according to justice. So God give this leader the ability to rule according to your wisdom and your justice. Number three, we can also pray for our political leaders for their restraint that God would reign them in when necessary. And that’s, there are plenty of Bible verses for that, actually restraint or removal or replacement actually, as they go against God’s laws and undermine peace in society. Number four, we can pray for peace in society in general. For Christians especially, as we saw in 1 Timothy 2. And that leaders will enable that. Number five, we can be praying for our political officials in a way that, actually this is for us in light of who they are. Strength and courage as Christians to endure maybe their persecution that’s coming our way. And we’ll just have to live with it and deal with it. Christians have had to do that all throughout history. Number six, how else can I pray for my political officials? Maybe at times it’s appropriate to pray for God’s wrath. We know that 1 Romans 1:18 says that the wrath of God is being poured out currently on all unrighteousness and ungodliness that’s going on in the world. So that is praying with the will of God. This is not a personal vendetta against individual leaders, but just a general truth that thank you Lord for pouring out your wrath, vengeance is yours, I don’t have to worry about that. You know what you’re doing, thank you. So this is maybe just a thanksgiving that God’s in charge as he doles out wrath that’s appropriate according to his will. And then finally number seven, sometimes we just don’t know how to pray. And Paul said that in Romans and just that’s the Holy Spirit intercedes on our behalf sometimes. We want to pray, but we don’t know what to say. We don’t have the articulation of the right words. We don’t have enough information and the spirit intercedes.
So we can at least pray for God’s will to be done. God, I don’t know what to do about this candidate or this law that’s being done or all the authority that they seem to be abusing God, but would your will be done, please? I want to trust you with this. May God’s will be done. So there’s just seven practical ways that we can beef up our prayer life on behalf of political officials.
Derek: Well this has been a very encouraging and helpful podcast and I hope it has been, it’s been that way for me. It’s been that way for our listeners and we need to be proactive in our prayer life for our leaders. It’s been very helpful. And we want to encourage you to continue to check out withallwisdom.org. We’ve got resources as Cliff has already mentioned. We have plenty of resources already on the website that relate to government and politics and how Christians should think about them. We have podcasts, we have articles, and we just encourage you to get on the website, type in the search bar, politics or government, and you’ll find multiple resources that will be helpful to you. And we look forward to seeing you and until next time, keep seeking the Lord in His Word.
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