Thursday, June 19, 2008

God and King

Joe Carter offers "Six Thoughts about Jesus" and they are interesting thoughts. One of them:
"Jesus is not a Republican or a Democrat," said John Mark Reynolds, "He's probably a monarchist." When I first heard that at GodBlogCon several years ago I thought it was clever; now I find it to be a profound insight. Jesus constantly talked about the Kingdom of Heaven. So why do so few Christians talk about it? One reason, I believe, is that we are now all republicans and democrats (small-R, small-D) and simply don't understand what Jesus is talking about. We may use the term "Lord" and "King of Kings" but — unlike the vast majority of people throughout history we do not comprehend what it means to live under the reign of a king. We need some remedial training on how to live as subjects in a kingdom. We may be justified in rejecting the divine right of kings to rule but we cannot be justified if we reject the rule of our divine king.
Monarchies have subjects, not citizens. Subjects don't vote for their leader; they obey him. In human polities, this is risky because our leaders, whether elected or not, are fallible, sinful beings. "Put not your trust in princes." As Churchill noted, the advantage of democracy is only in comparison to all other forms of government. When your King is God, the only risk in obeying Him is temporal and temporary.

Six Thoughts About Jesus - the evangelical outpost

2 comments:

  1. Jim, I found your blog while doing a google search and since I was originally baptised in the SDB church, I decided to check it out. You make some great points here and I will have to come back and read more. My family (mothers side) is from Alfred NY and we grew up knowing the Davis, Van Horn and Bond Family. My sister is good friends with Susan Bond (of Sabbath Recorder fame). The other day, I met a guy quite by accident and found out his wife is a Burdick and knew my grandmother when she was alive. Small world isn't it. Keep up the great blogging.

    Greg

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks, Greg.

    Glad you like the blog. Please do keep coming back.

    That's list of pretty familiar last names! My mother is a Bond.

    Jim

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