O PreacherIt’s hard for me to believe that the U.S. government as it is today is from God.

But what Paul wrote in the days of the Roman Empire is true now:  “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities.  For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God” (Romans 13:1,2).

So we subject ourselves to the government’s laws (even when as it appears these days some government “servants” themselves don’t!).  Still we must, because God commands it and, therefore, paying taxes (Romans 13:7) is worship.  (I’d rather sing.)

Nevertheless, we must remember our primary allegiance is to our God and his kingdom.  ” . . . our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ” (Philippians 3:20).  We are a people who live with one foot in the U.S.A. and the other in the Kingdom of God.  We subject ourselves to this nation’s laws because we belong to a King who rules over all, because we believe the day comes soon when ” . . . at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:10,11).  We bow to Jesus now by respecting those in governmental authority over us (Romans 13:7).

But if we don’t do more than that we’ve failed in our mission.  Because God’s kingdom in Christ is sovereign, because God’s kingdom in Christ will outlast all others, because God’s kingdom in Christ is our only hope for a truly righteous and just government, we must spread the news about it.  One way is by living and speaking prophetically–not prophetically as in “foretelling the future” but prophetically as in “calling people to the covenant laws of God.”

I don’t know the Hobby Lobby people personally.  I assume, though, they withstood the Obama care law that required them to provide abortion-causing contraceptives to their employees because they believed the higher law of the kingdom of God.  In other words, they took a prophetic stance.  They insisted they were accountable first to God.  It seems to me we will face more opportunities such as this in the future.  We need to be ready.

Meanwhile, we can point to “the High King of Heaven” by loving the unlovable, by nurturing strong marriages, by raising our children to live like children of the King, and by using the freedoms God has given us in this country to let it be known that we are “strangers and exiles on the earth” who “desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one” (Hebrews 11:13,16).