Derek: 00:28

Welcome back to the Fourth Way podcast. We've spent the last two episodes working through government as depicted in the Old Testament and in the Gospels. Today, I want to finish off the Biblical view of government by working through the remainder of the New Testament, which are composed mostly of epistles. So far, we've seen that government in the Old Testament was constantly viewed as an attempted usurpation of God's kingship, particularly through the Old Testament. The Gospels showed us how Jesus is truly king and how He comes to establish His kingship and solidify His rule.

Derek: 01:04

But how He does this is completely contradictory to how earthly kings rule and grasp at power. We've seen how government fails and usurps God and how God is king and rules in a true fashion. And that sets up the stage for today's episode which is the Bible's view of government in light of the truth that Jesus reigns now and has established His Kingdom. One of the hardest things for many Christians today to grasp is that Jesus reigns empowered now and that He has brought His Kingdom, past tense. Despite the fact that Jesus explicitly states that the Kingdom of God is at hand and He brought it and the good news of its arrival is to be preached, we don't believe it.

Derek: 01:51

Actually, take it back, I think that's a lie. I think we do believe it. We just soften the truth by thinking that Jesus can't really have meant what he said. We don't think he brought the kingdom, he brought a kingdom, an alternative the one that isn't to replace the physical one that we live in, but rather some esoteric, immaterial, gooey, future oriented kingdom that we can't do anything but put speculative belief in. But it's not a real thing, at least not yet it isn't.

Derek: 02:21

All I can say is that this isn't at all how Jesus viewed the kingdom nor is it how the rest of the New Testament views it. Now it is true that there are aspects of the kingdom which won't be fully realized until the end of days, but the kingdom is here now and it is to expand. I think a good place to start for this is in Ephesians. There, Paul is clear that Jesus reigns in power and because He reigns in power, we have access to every spiritual blessing and they're secured. In Ephesians one, we see Jesus on the throne, seated, meaning He secured His position and we see that God has placed all things under His feet.

Derek: 02:59

He's above all rule, authority, power and dominion. While Jesus reigns as we speak, we are His ambassadors and we are to spread this news throughout the world. We're to do battle for Christ's kingdom and to advance it. It is our sole allegiance. However, we see that this battle is not with flesh and blood as Paul says, and when we do fight, we have the armor of God in Ephesians, which is spiritual.

Derek: 03:24

And we likewise have spiritual weapons of truthful speech and righteousness in our right and left hand as seen in second Corinthians. Nowhere in the Bible are our enemies depicted as being humans and nowhere are our weapons depicted as being anything other than spiritual. This is even true in the book of Revelation where Jesus, the lion, turns into a slaughtered lamb and where he goes about conquering not with a steel sword but with his testimony and a sword from his mouth. His followers are told to conquer in like fashion. And this focus on spiritual battle isn't because the are advocating a parallel kingdom which harmonizes with the worldly kingdoms.

Derek: 04:03

Jesus' kingdom isn't a parallel kingdom, it's a replacement. It subverts kingdoms which is why Christians who are truly following Christ haven't stuck around too long before being persecuted by a government. The kingdom of Jesus being of a different nature than earthly kingdoms, it doesn't make it irrelevant to our lives in this world. No, instead it really rounds them out. Such a view of true reality recognizes, as we saw in the Old Testament, that principalities and powers are behind the nations, whether that was God dividing the nations among the sons of God, the demons of Greece and Persia in Daniel, the power of demons through Pharaoh's government or Satan's offering Jesus the kingdoms of the world.

Derek: 04:49

Recognizing Jesus' kingdom is the holistic view while recognizing the earthly kingdoms as a necessity or an inevitability, I should say, and even more than that, elevating them as necessary and vital powers, that ultimately just waters down reality. Jesus was the second Adam and He showed us what it means to be truly human, and that authenticity comes by being connected in spirit with Him and the Father. It is only by giving Jesus' kingdom the preeminence that we can be of any use to the world, as it is only then that we will act as God intended us to act. This focus on spiritual warfare, on doing what's right with integrity, on throwing consequentialism to the side, and on submitting to God's ways is a huge focus of the New Testament. It's Jesus' main struggle throughout the Gospels and we see it pop up again and again.

Derek: 05:45

Perhaps we don't see the struggle more deeply than in Romans 13 and in in Peter. In Romans 13, we see that Paul is just finished describing what Christians are to look like and it's quite a bill to fill. How can they do all these things when the world is so bad? And Paul admonishes them to just do what is right even in the face of seeming defeat. Sure, Caesar calls himself Lord, but we can submit to whoever our Caesar is knowing who the true Lord is and understanding that God works all things together for good to those of us who love Him.

Derek: 06:19

Peter likewise tells us that we can submit in all sorts of impossible circumstances and for exactly the same reason that Paul tells us. Jesus submitted and we can trust God just as He did. Peter even expounds on this by declaring that we are aliens and strangers in this world. This is not our kingdom here on earth. We don't have any allegiance here.

Derek: 06:41

We are a borderless nation. Coming back to Paul, he puts things another way. He says in second Timothy, No one serving as a soldier gets entangled in civilian affairs, but rather tries to please his commanding officer. Our allegiance is to the big K Kingdom and we ought not to get entangled in civilian affairs or affairs of other states. Finally, and this is just a theological point, not one that I can really think of a specific verse that I'd point to because it's more of a structured concept, but I heard all my life that Jesus was prophet, priest and king.

Derek: 07:16

What I find really interesting is that while we believe Jesus miraculously fulfilled the roles of prophet and priest, to believe that Jesus does not reign in His kingdom now is to believe that He did not step into and fulfill His role as king. Not only does that go against all of the imagery of Jesus being seated on the throne, but it creates a huge problem in terms of the fulfillment of the Christ. I mean, did Jesus accomplish what he was supposed to accomplish or not? I thought he said it was finished. The issue is that if one acknowledges that they believe Jesus is king now, that has implications for lordship now, doesn't it?

Derek: 07:53

That has implications for how we engage with our little k kingdoms. So let me distill it down maybe a little bit more clearly. Either Jesus didn't fulfill what He was supposed to do and He isn't King or Jesus did fulfill what He intended and He's King now with serious implications for how we relate to other kingdoms and how we submit to His Lordship here. Well, take that back. I guess there probably is a third option.

Derek: 08:20

Jesus maybe emptied Himself and stepped down into a life of self sacrifice to fulfill all that for which He was anointed by God. But the kingdom he got is impotent and worthless in comparison to all the other real tangible kingdoms around us. Now if you ask me, it sounds like Satan has taken all the little Christ out into the desert and offered them true power with the kingdoms that he has to offer them. And we've gladly taken them up on that offer. We'd rather be kings in our kingdoms to have seeming power and effectiveness in the world than submit to a king like Jesus and a kingdom where to conquer is to die to self.

Derek: 08:58

Swords of steel are power, not swords of our mouths which bear witness of the lamb who was slain. Christ's kingdom preaches a foolish gospel so we relegate its applicability to some future life we hope we'll never see as evidenced by the way we cling to this life and fight for it tooth and claw. That's all for now. So peace and because I'm a pacifist, when I say it, I mean it. This podcast is a part of the Kingdom Outpost Network.

Derek: 09:46

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