Part 1: First Things | Part 2: The Landscape | Part 3: Levels of Authority 

It’s time to get down to brass tacks, as they say. We’ve looked at the key biblical material on authority and civil disobedience; now how do we live that out today? 

What do we do when the government—the law—orders us to disobey Scripture? 

Let’s get specific. Should you feed and house an illegal immigrant (or undocumented migrant, if you prefer)? Should you hide him from ICE? Should you lie to ICE? Should you try to stop them physically? 

You and I have Christian brothers and sisters who are asking themselves these questions right now, and who need answers—right now. 

Let me suggest a pathway for thinking through to a wise and right decision. 

 First thing first: recognize that God has providentially brought you to this place for His purposes (Ps 37.23). This issue didn’t come out of nowhere, and you are precisely where you are by the will and plan of God. He will provide the wisdom you need to make a right decision. 

Further, a significant part of his plan is to develop in you the character of Christ (2Co 3.18). Look for His purpose in your own character development, submit humbly to it, and pursue it. That might include improving your understanding of his Word, interacting appropriately with other believers (especially those further down the path of sanctification than you are), deepening your prayer life—Jesus, the perfect Son of God, felt the need to pray all night sometimes; how about you? and me? 

Evaluate your disagreement with the authority figure in light of the Bible’s teaching. Be honest with yourself. And as I noted earlier, consider carefully the thinking of believers, particularly long-time believers, who disagree with you. To do this, you’re going to have to swim against the polarizing forces in the current culture. You’re going to need to talk calmly and respectfully with people you disagree with. 

Nobody does that anymore. 

Further, recognize your own limitations. You cannot reliably discern motives, nor can you know all the considerations in any decision by an authority.  

If you are convinced that the authority is acting unbiblically, begin by submitting to the authority’s procedure(s) for challenging the decision. It is not an accident that you are under that particular authority. Most of us live in a democratically oriented state system, and there are things we can do short of burning it all down. We can interact with those in authority; and there are legal ways to exert political pressure. 

If your conscience, informed by Scripture, forbids you to submit to that authority’s procedures for redress, then disobey humbly and graciously, and submit to the penalty. On the other hand, if you can and do follow the procedures, and the authority overrules your plea, then you need to make the same decision: must you disobey in order to protect your conscience? If so, then do so, and accept whatever penalty the authority determines.  

 Let me add a rider to this. The Bible indicates that Paul responded to government persecution in various ways. As mentioned in the previous post, sometimes he went underground with his civil disobedience (2Co 11.32-33). Some would see that as evidence that you need not disobey publicly and take the penalty. Fair enough. 

More often, however, Paul disobeyed publicly and faced the state’s response squarely. But even in these cases his tactics varied. Once, tied to a whipping post, he asserted his right as a Roman citizen by turning to the nearest official and saying essentially, “Say, isn’t it illegal to beat a Roman citizen without a trial?” (Ac 22.24-29). At which point the whip disappeared. 

That story always makes me laugh. 

Earlier in his career, he used a different tactic. In Philippi, he and his colleague Silas took the beating, making no mention of their rights (Ac 16.22-24). The next day they confronted the authorities by revealing their Roman citizenship (Silas was apparently a citizen too, Ac 16.37), a fact that put these authorities in jeopardy of the death penalty. Paul insisted on a public escort out of town and even took the group by the church’s house (Ac 16.39-40), as if to say, “These are my friends. It would be a shame if anything happened to my friends.” 

Is it too strong to say that Paul was blackmailing them? That’s a good question. 

Paul knew how the system worked, and he worked it, to his own advantage and to that of the work of the kingdom. 

Even an unjust steward knows how to do that (Lk 16.8). 

Jesus instructed us all to be “wise as serpents and harmless as doves” (Mt 10.16). In this chaotic culture, he will enable us to do that. 

Together. 

Photo by Koshu Kunii on Unsplash

Part 1: First Things | Part 2: The Landscape 

Given that the world system, and its inhabitants, are broken, we have to expect that the divinely created order, as represented in the biblical authority structures, will not perfectly conform to the divine standard of justice. Thus those in various degrees of authority over us will at least occasionally be unjust. 

What do we do then? Man the barricades? Take it to the streets? Burn it all down? 

There are some that think this way. My suspicion is that they’re a relatively small portion of society, but they outsize their influence by the sheer volume of the noise they make. Squeaky wheels, after all, do get greased. 

We’ve based our thinking about authority structures on a quick survey of the biblical material. Looking a little more deeply, however, makes a couple of things abundantly clear: 

• As just noted, our authorities are imperfect. 
• When they fail in their obligation to promote justice, we have options. 

Since God created these authority structures (as noted in the previous post), and since God is Lord of Hosts, Creator of Heaven and Earth, he holds authority over the existing powers, and we owe him obedience in all things. Thus if your home, or state, or church orders you to do something that violates God’s will as expressed in his Word, then you must disobey that earthly authority. 

We have multiple examples of this. David ran from King Saul (1S 19.18ff) even while respecting his position as king (1S 24.1-15). Paul escaped from the king of Damascus by going over the wall in the middle of the night (2Co 11.32-33). In an appearance before the Sanhedrin, the Jewish Supreme Court, Paul called the high priest a “whitewashed [and by implication deeply filthy] wall” (Ac 23.3). (To be fair, I note that the interpretation of Paul’s intent here is disputed; some think he didn’t realize to whom he was speaking, as he says in verse 5. But I’m doubtful that he wouldn’t recognize the high priest, and I suspect he was being sarcastic in verse 5, implying that a genuine high priest wouldn’t act this way.) 

Most interpreters think the clearest illustration of this principle of Higher Authority is in Acts 4, where the Sanhedrin orders Peter and John to stop preaching about Jesus. This restriction, if obeyed, would clearly be disobedience to Jesus’ last command, the Great Commission, which obligates the two to preach in his name. 

Their response is classic: 

Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye. ²⁰For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard (Ac 4.19-20). 

In the Olinger Revised Version, it reads, 

You do what you want; we’re going to do what we have to do. 

And they continued to preach, directly disobeying their governmental authority. In Peter’s case, that brought him imprisonment (Ac 12.1-3) and eventually, tradition says, execution by crucifixion. John, on the other hand, lived a long life and died a natural death—if you can call slaving in the salt mines in your 80s a natural death. 

There is indeed a higher authority. 

Now, if we are to obey God when our authorities contradict his will, then it’s really important that we know what that will is. If a voice in your head tells you to take a shot at the President, and you think that voice belongs to God, you’re going to be in a pile of trouble with guys in black suits who talk to their wrists, and even worse, it will all have been for nothing, because that voice in your head is not in fact from God. 

There’s only one reliable source of God’s words and will, and that is the Scripture. We all need to know what it says. 

And further, we need to be sure of our biblical understanding. If the Bible-believing population is divided on whether the Bible actually says this or that, we need to slow down and evaluate what we’ve read. Maybe one side’s wrong and the other is right; but the very division among people who love God and believe their Bibles should call for some extra thought and careful consideration. 

Next time: bringing it all together on a Thursday in July. 

Photo by Koshu Kunii on Unsplash

Part 1: First Things 

As broken people—like everybody else—in a broken world, we will face disagreements and conflicts. To ameliorate and mediate these conflicts, God has established authority structures under which we all live and function. 

Before I delineate those, I’d like to note that much of modern culture rejects the whole idea of authority structures. Anarchists, such as Antifa, reject all governmental authority. Non-religious people reject church authority structures, of course, and a majority of contemporary Western culture rejects familial authority structures, most obviously the authority of husbands over their wives and the authority of parents over their children—the latter seeming particularly unpopular with many teachers in public education. 

Now, such people are of course free to believe whatever they want, but as is the case anytime humans reject the divine order, they run pretty quickly into a workability problem. Whether you’re doing away with government or other authority structures, you’re going to end up with chaos, with everyone doing what’s right in his own eyes. That’s been tried before (Jdg 21.25)—more than once—and it has never turned out well. Feel free to think of examples beyond the two I’ve mentioned; the pattern holds. 

Arguments against authority typically simply cite examples of abuses of governmental or ecclesiastical or familial authority, and there are many. But the fact that something is done wrong is no argument that it cannot be done right, or that it is so inherently evil that it shouldn’t be done at all. Is Florence Foster-Jenkins proof that nobody should sing? Given the brokenness of the world and its inhabitants, there will always be abuses. When they occur, we ought to correct them, but we will never construct a system in which such abuses don’t happen. 

How about  

“Come on, people, now, smile on your brother; 
Everybody get together, try to love one another right now”? 

I heard Jesse Colin Young sing that live on Boston Common more than fifty years ago. Didn’t work then; doesn’t work now. 

So I would suggest that it’s worth our time to recognize the authority structures under which God has placed us and to seek to live orderly, sensible, and realistic lives instead of insisting on the “freedom” of making things up as we go, all the way to utter chaos. 

I’ve already identified those authority structures above (contextually, as formal debaters say), but let me list them formally here, in the order in which God created them. 

The Home / Family 

The first people God created he intended to be a unit, an organism. Specifically, they were to be husband and wife (Ge 2.18, 21-25), and, as the language indicates, they were to have children (Ge 2.24, “one flesh”; cf Ge 9.1, 7). Later Scripture speaks repeatedly of the authority of parents over their children (e.g. Ep 6.1-4). 

The State / Government 

There is obviously no need for a state until the human population grows beyond a single family, but that apparently came very early in history, given the extended lifespans in that time (Adam, for example, lived to be more than 800 years old [Ge 5.4]). Adam’s son, Cain, established “a city” (Ge 4.17), probably several centuries after creation. We’re not told what sort of government it had, but some organization must have been involved. 

As Noah left the ark after the flood, God bestowed on humans the authority of capital punishment (Ge 9.6), which I think can serve as a clear indication of human government. 

And if the state can kill you for violating its law against murder, then clearly it has authority and can command obedience. 

It’s worth noting that pretty much all government in those days—indeed, all the way through the Medieval period—was autocratic. Of course the ancient Greeks experimented with democracy in Athens and Sparta, but that was short-lived and not influential. The current broad menu of governmental systems is a recent and unusual development. But the authority has always been there. 

The Church 

This third authority structure is a relative latecomer, having been instituted after the earthly ministry of Christ, at Pentecost (Ac 2.47 is the first biblical mention of the church as existing). It is never said to have authority over nonbelievers (hence the poor record of theocratic systems in the centuries since), but believers are often told to recognize and obey ecclesiastical authorities (e.g.2Th 3.7; He 13.7). 

Now. 

Since the world and everyone in it is broken, these authority structures are broken as well. There are mistakes and errors in judgment and execution, and often there are abuses. 

Now what? 

Next time. 

Photo by Koshu Kunii on Unsplash

We live in a culture of protest, and one that didn’t just recently arrive on the scene. Nearly a century ago Mahatma Gandhi advocated non-violent protest against the British Empire’s claim of sovereignty over Indian affairs. Martin Luther King Jr. borrowed significantly from Gandhi in his leadership of protests against Jim Crow practices during the height of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. Pro-life protesters have been active outside abortion clinics for decades. Beginning in 2009, Tea Party activists protested publicly. And more recently various Occupy and Antifa factions have engaged in protests, most famously in Seattle and Portland.  

I’ve chosen to name these specific examples for their diversity—not just on the political spectrum, but the degree to which they advocate civil disobedience or violence. There are clearly different ways to protest. 

Protest is an effective way, especially with political issues, to get a cause onto the political agenda. It’s even implied in the US Constitution. It’s a common tool for dealing with authorities with whom we disagree. 

A context of protest provides a good opportunity for us to evaluate the biblical data on authority and to give some thought to how we can best respond when one of our authorities acts in a way we think is wrong. 

So let’s begin, as we always should, by laying out some biblical principles that can help determine our philosophy of protest and then guide our application of that philosophy. 

The Glory of God 

The Prime Directive is the glory of God. Our thoughts, words, and actions must reflect positively on him; they must attribute weightiness to him, giving others legitimate reason to think well of him—whether they end up doing so or not. We cannot control the decisions others make about their view of God, but we must not give them legitimate reason to think poorly of him. 

Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God (1Co 10.31). 

Only He is worth all of our love, all of our loyalty, and all of our devotion. God is the only person we can follow blindly—and He doesn’t ask us to; he has left millennia of historical record of his goodness, greatness, and faithfulness. 

This is a weighty task, one with eternal consequences. It must not be merely in the back of our minds as we lay out our plan of action. 

Thus it’s worth stating here at the outset that the cause for which we protest is always—always—secondary to our primary purpose of glorifying God and carrying out his commission to take his gospel to the ends of the earth. 

The Brokenness of Our World 

Our world, and everything in it, is broken. In God’s good plan, sin has damaged his creation. It has rendered us broken as people, and it has broken our environment and our circumstances (Ge 3.1-19). I’ll get to some implications of that later in the series. 

So we must not be surprised by evil, including injustice; but on the other hand, we must not be apathetic about it either, waving it off as “just the way things are,” with a flippant “if it doesn’t affect me, then what do I care?” As part of bringing glory to God, we are called to battle the world’s evil and bring healing and relief, to the degree that we can, where evil reveals itself. 

God Reigns 

God is not stymied or frustrated by evil; he is so much bigger than evil that he can use it to accomplish his own purposes (Ge 50.20). God is directing the course of each life for his glory (Ps 37.23). And for now, he has called all of us to walk as broken people in a broken world. Sometimes this means that we will experience evil and injustice (Job 1). 

But in the end, his will—his good will—is always accomplished. He directs and sustains us through evil things purposefully, in order to accomplish His goal in us: to conform us to the image of His dear Son (2Co 3.18). 

Next time, we’ll look more closely at the systems he uses to accomplish this. 

Photo by Koshu Kunii on Unsplash