Essay #1: Government: A Creation of God

 by Norman D. Fox -
 
     God has designed three forms of government through which His delegated authority can legitimately flow for the orderly management of human affairs.
  1. FAMILY GOVERNMENT.  Parents exercise God’s delegated authority (Eph. 6:1-4) within the institution of the family.
  2. CHURCH GOVERNMENT.  Selected spiritual leaders exercise God’s delegated authority (Eph. 4:11-12) within the institution of the church.
  3. CIVIL GOVERNMENT.  Political leaders exercise God’s delegated authority (Rom. 13:1-7) within the institution of nations.
 
     These three institutions, their responsibilities and leadership structures, are all designed by God and can only function legitimately under His authority.
 
     Jesus said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given unto me.”  His claim was not limited to “spiritual” authority; He asserts authority over all things.  During His trial, Jesus told Pontius Pilate, “You would have no authority over Me, unless it had been given you from above” (Jn. 19:10-11).  Isaiah was clearly referring to something more than the “spiritual” when he wrote of the Messiah that “the government will rest on His shoulders,” and “There will be no end to the increase of His government,” in Isa. 9:6-7.
 
      America’s Founding Fathers wrote in the Declaration of Independence that their entitlement to form a new nation was based on “the laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.”  (See Essay #33, The Declaration of Independence).  There was never any question among the Founders on this point.  The authority behind America’s civil government and its laws was God’s.  Samuel Adams, after signing the Declaration, summarized as follows what he and the other 55 signers had just done:  “We have this day restored the Sovereign to Whom all men ought to be obedient.  He reigns in heaven, and from the rising to the setting of the sun, let His Kingdom come.”
 
      Yet the Founders never intended civil government to be run by the church.  God’s authority, they understood, flowed through church and civil governments in different ways.  Still, the same God is over all.  When Jesus said, “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s” (Matt. 22:21), He was not describing two mutually exclusive domains.  (See Essay #30, Taxation:  “Rendering Unto Caesar.”)  Caesar’s domain (civil government) is a subset of God’s domain, as we have seen. 
 
      On the other hand, the Founders were not fearful of allowing leaders to exercise authority in both civil and church governments.  Many early American leaders were clergymen who simultaneously held civil government offices.  The present-day doctrine of church-state separation was unknown at that time.  (See Essays #12, Separation of Church and State, and #21, Founders Breached the Famous “Wall.”)  
 
     The American colonists’ objection was specifically to the European model of civil and church power being exercised by the same man who had not been elected to either function by the people.  In the American model, the people had the power to choose or to dismiss their civil leaders by way of election, and had a similar power in most of the churches.

    Romans 13 teaches that civil government and its agents are servants of God, but of course a servant cannot be rebelliously disobedient to God and still be a servant.  Like many Bible teachings, the Romans 13 passage proceeds on the premise that God’s will is being done, at least in general terms.  (See Essay # 26, Romans 13:  Government as God’s Servant.)  Psalm 2 shows that God permits heads of government to defy him, but only temporarily.  (See Essay #42, Psalm 2:  When Nations Defy God.)  Authority at any level of government is either delegated by God or usurped from God.
  
     Usurpation of power occurs when any of the three institutions of government intrudes into areas properly governed by the others.  Examples could be the church attempting to exercise the law enforcement function of civil government, or a state government intruding on the child-raising functions of the family or the evangelistic mission of the church.  (See Essay #17, I Tim. 2:  Prayer, Politics and Evangelism.)
 
      Such intrusions create problems not just because they represent power struggles among the three modes of government.  God in His wisdom has distributed governmental duties for maximum efficiency, and when those duties are exercised by the wrong institutions, God’s purposes simply cannot be accomplished with full effectiveness.  Two striking examples of this are when civil government insists on being the primary source of poverty relief (See Essay #5, Poverty) or of children’s education (See Essays #24, Normal Christian Education, and #43, The Return to Homeschooling.)
 
   Well-informed Christians must understand the three institutions God has designed, and their legitimate functions and governments.  We should assess the actions of civil government by the standard of what the scriptures say about its proper role.
 
For further study:
 
William Federer, ed., America’s God and Country Encyclopedia of Quotations, 1994, FAME Publishing, Inc., 820 S. MacArthur Blvd, Suite 105-220, Coppell, TX, 75019-4214, www.amerisearch.net   
 
Gary DeMar, God and Government:  A Biblical and Historical Study, vol. 1, (chapters 1-6), 1989, American Vision, Inc., PO Box 220, Powder Springs, GA  30127, www.americanvision.org
 
James L. Adams, Yankee Doodle Went to Church:  The Righteous Revolution of 1776, especially ch. 8, 1989, Fleming H. Revell publishers, Old Tappan, NJ, 07675    
 

 
 

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