From John Sykes
Too many well-meaning Christians, Pastors included, incorrectly use Romans 13 to try to dissuade others from getting involved in politics. They need to realize that this and other scriptures really give our secularist rulers specific instructions to “to make a determination between good and evil behavior (13:3)”. We must insist on this and must be involved in politics to see that God-fearing men don’t forget it!
Quoting Attacks on Christianity is Designed to Silence Christians and Keep them Home on Election Day:
…Paul told the Ephesian elders that he did not shrink from declaring to them the “whole purpose of God” (Acts 20:27). When confronted by the Roman government, he declared his Roman citizenship (Acts 22:25–30) and later appealed to Caesar for justice (25:7–12). In time the Roman Empire fell and Christianity marched on.
Paul repeats the commandments prohibiting adultery, murder, and theft (Rom. 13:9), and sums up his specific exhortation on the law with the general command to “love your neighbor as yourself” (13:9). These instructions came after he informed his fellow-Christians that the civil magistrate is a “minister of God” (13:4) who is to make a determination between good and evil behavior (13:3). It’s these truths that secularists despise. That’s why they are on the attack and have silent pulpits as their unwitting allies.
These commandments have multiple social applications. The civil magistrate is to love his neighbor by not burdening him with excessive taxation and bureaucratic entanglements to frustrate his God-endowed freedoms to earn a living and provide for his family.
No doubt the magistrate is to work for a civil order that results in a “tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity” (1 Tim. 2:2).
In the first-century, all that these Christians could do was to appeal to God with “entreaties and prayers, petitions and thanksgivings” since they had no freedom to petition the Roman Empire with their political wishes (1 Tim. 2:1).
We have that freedom and right. We can “petition the government for a redress of grievances.” It’s written right in the Constitution. God through His mercy has established the United States as a civil society in which we can through our voice and vote make changes for the betterment of all. To remain silent in the face of evil is a grave sin. Read it all here …
From A Conflict of Culture:
In our day, as in ancient Rome, the powers-that-be and their cultural elite sidekicks have captured the bully pulpits of the land, and they are using them to propagandize a view of truth that could not sustain the Roman Empire against internal corruption, and will not sustain ours. At the risk of scorn, opposition, and conflict of various kinds, Christians, who know the Truth as it is in Jesus, must stand up and declare their allegiance, expose the folly of pragmatic unbelief, and call the world to its senses, before it is too late.
For while many Christians may find it easier and less threatening to sit silently by while proponents of the Lie poison every nook and cranny of life with the myth of pragmatism, God will not. Even now His wrath is beginning to be revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. Let’s make sure that we don’t, by our craven silence, find ourselves on the wrong side of the Lord.
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