Jesus and Government 4(b): What role is left for Government?

“Secular” Authority
Government under Christ’s Lordship is pushed back, called to humbly perform the task of judgment until Jesus returns and human society finds its perfection. Significantly, the apostle Paul links this role to the Church’s mission:

I urge, then, first of all, that petitions, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone—for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. (1 Timothy 2:1-4)

Paul urges that prayers be offered for government so that social order may be maintained – “so that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness”; but this is not the end in itself. This maintaining order serves a more important purpose: enabling “people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.” Good government ensures the social space for the church’s mission.

This role of defending the common good by condemning wrong and upholding right, which also serves the spread of the gospel, is the Bible’s idea of secular government. The word “secular” has come to mean “non-religious”; but it was never meant to mean that. “Secular” comes from the Latin word saeculum, which means “age.” So “secular government” means “government in this age”. The opposite of “secular” is not “sacred” but “eternal”. As Oliver O’Donovan helpfully expresses:

The most truly Christian state understands itself most thoroughly as “secular”. It makes the confession of Christ’s victory and accepts the relegation of its own authority… The essential element in the conversion of the ruling power is the change in its self-understanding and its manner of government to suit the dawning age of Christ’s own rule. (Desire of the Nations, 219)

Good government recognises that it is “secular”, that it has a limited role to play in this age only, until Jesus returns and the Kingdom of God is made visible to all.

Romans 13 and 1 Peter 2 describe the place given to government in this age; but their authors well knew that rulers could reject this role and seek to be more than the simple task that was given to them. So elsewhere in the Bible we see that there is another possibility for government in this age: instead of recognising that Jesus is Lord, government can fight back. This possibility may underlie the description (quite possibly of the Roman Emperor) of the “Man of Lawlessness” in 2 Thessalonians 2, and is certainly described by John in the book of Revelation. The beast of chapter 13, which the dragon calls out of the sea, and which in turn calls a beast out of the earth is a totalitarian political government, like the Roman Empire, which controls military and economic power and forces people to worship it. The book of Revelation, shows quite profoundly how government can go horribly wrong and become deeply evil, and one can only wonder how the twentieth century might have been different if we had been more sensitive to John’s warnings about the dangers of governments that demand our allegiance?

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For more on this last idea, see Oliver O’Donovan’s essay, “The political thought of the Book of Revelation” now published in Oliver O’Donovan and Joan Lockwood O’Donovan, Bonds of Imperfection: Christian Politics Past and Present, as “History and Politics in the Book of Revelation”, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004, 25-47. I have found this essay deeply interesting and challenging. Reading Revelation with political eyes is very illuminating.