It seems many modern-day seminarians and pastors within evangelicalism are looking for excuses to ease off the whole “Christ is Lord of the nations” thing. Sure, they agree with the general idea – so long as the general idea doesn’t actually lead to bringing the Christian worldview to bear on civil policies, humanistic laws, government-funded education, and the religion of the state. We can say Jesus is Lord of the state, but we just can’t say it to the state. That wouldn’t be very loving. Even worse, someone might listen to us.
It’s one thing to say Jesus is Lord of all, it is another thing entirely to say everyone actually has to obey him. Come to think of it, I don’t think Caesar would have minded the former, so long as the latter was verboten.
One of those excuses proffered by erudite scholars and lockdown-affirming pastors is that the state will always be idolatrous. They say this, of course, after submitting to the state’s idolatrous edict of forcing churches to cease gathering in the name of Fauci, amen. “The state will always be idolatrous, and we will make sure of it.” Isn’t that sort of like throwing the game? Moreover, that also looks like a bad beat.
The contest of Christ versus Caesar is not going to result in a push. Christ will utterly decimate his rivals. All the nations of the earth will be the heritage of Christ, the ends of the earth his possession (Psalm 2:8). In fact, he is already in the process of doing so (Hebrews 1:13). Christ is King now, and we are charged with discipling all the nations (Matthew 28:18-20) and praying for his kingdom to come, not go away (Matthew 6:10).
So, back to the excuse. Because nations will always be idolatrous, there is no point in laboring to disciple all nations, including the butcher, the baker, and the humanistic law-maker.
I have two responses to this excuse. A short one and a less short one.
First, the short response. It is true that nations are often idolatrous, but that is no reason to disobey Christ’s commission to disciple them. God told Jeremiah, “So you shall speak all these words to them, but they will not listen to you. You shall call to them, but they will not answer you. And you shall say to them, ‘This is the nation that did not obey the voice of the Lord their God, and did not accept discipline; truth has perished; it is cut off from their lips’” (Jeremiah 7:27-28).
So, even if every nation in our generation is an idolatrous cesspool of pagan religion, immorality, and statism, how does that change our responsibility? We just need to toughen up and take our lumps as we lay the groundwork for the next generation. Or we can give up and retreat into our seminaries, Sunday School classes, and Christian retreat centers. I prefer the non-milksop option.
Okay, now for the other response.
Is it true that the nations will always be idolatrous? This is almost too easy to answer. Of course, the nations will not always be idolatrous. I’m not sure if this is an accepted authority within American evangelicalism, but I am going to reference a book called the Bible.
Psalm 86:9: “All the nations you have made shall come and worship before you, O Lord, and shall glorify your name.”
Jeremiah 3:17: “At that time Jerusalem shall be called the throne of the Lord, and all nations shall gather to it, to the presence of the Lord in Jerusalem, and they shall no more stubbornly follow their own evil heart.”
Isaiah 2:2-3: “It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be lifted up above the hills; and all the nations shall flow to it, and many people shall come and say: ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.’ For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.”
Are those idolatrous nations? No, in fact, they are not.
An idolatrous nation is not one in which a few idolaters are hiding out in their basements watching ancient episodes of South Park while the society around them is seeking to honor Christ. That would be what we call a Christian nation – a Christian nation with a little more work to do.
Eschatological Debbie Downers and timeline debates notwithstanding, all the nations will worship the risen Christ. Of this, we can be certain. And it will happen in history. And we’ve already seen nations do so in history.
Let’s go back to the Bible (sorry, not sorry). “And the king [Josiah] stood in his place and made a covenant before the Lord, to walk after the Lord and to keep his commandments and his testimonies and his statutes, with all his heart and all his soul, to perform the words of the covenant that were written in this book. Then he made all who were present in Jerusalem and in Benjamin join in it. And the inhabitants of Jerusalem did according to the covenant of God, the God of their fathers. And Josiah took away all the abominations from all the territory that belonged to the people of Israel and made all who were present in Israel serve the Lord their God. All his days they did not turn away from following the Lord, the God of their fathers” (2 Chronicles 34:31-33).
Is it just me, or does that sound like the exact opposite of an idolatrous nation?
I think that just about settles it.
Wait, here comes the next excuse: “But it won’t last!”
I have an answer for that, and it is the same one I give my son when he remonstrates against cutting the grass again. “It won’t last.” Yeah, I know buddy. Cut it anyway.
National idolatry is no more inevitable than personal idolatry or familial idolatry or ecclesiastical idolatry. Sure, it happens. But I want to share something very exciting with the modern theologians: Christian theology contains something that we call the “good news.” And the Scripture preached this “good news” to Abraham, saying, “In you shall all the nations be blessed” (Galatians 3:8).
The grass and the weeds grow back. The basement idolaters sometimes get a following. So what? Get back to work, son.
If you do, you might find that you have just enough time to admire your work, like a freshly mown lawn, or a nation ordering its affairs in the name of Christ the Lord.
Here’s one worth gazing at for a moment: “That no law shall be enacted which is at variance with the word of the Lord Jehovah, or at variance with the general spirit of His word. All laws of the Islands shall be in consistency with the general spirit of God’s law” (Kingdom of Hawai’i Constitution of 1840).
Alright, that’s enough admiring. The grass is starting to grow again and it’s time to get back to work. And I think you missed a spot.
Chris Hume is the host of The Lancaster Patriot Podcast and the author of several books, including Seven Statist Sins. He can be reached at info@thelancasterpatriot.com.
