Whether Voters, Too, Can Be Saved

Ever since the Fall, the evil impulses of man’s heart have needed to be restrained, lest wickedness proliferate among us. In His mercy, God sent Jesus Christ to die on our behalf, providing whoever believes in Him with the eternal remedy for our sinful natures. But even in the here and now, God has not left mankind without recourse. Out of love, He instituted human government and assigned it the sword to place hard limits on our ability to follow those sinful natures while we yet possess them.

As American Christians watch our family, friends, and neighbors suffer because evil goes increasingly unrestrained, we are stirred up with that same love shown to us by the Father. We not only pray for the gift of godly government, but work through the vocations He’s given to establish it among us. When He gives us voices and platforms, we speak against evil. When He appoints us to vote or govern, we use that authority to restrain evil. Whenever He puts people into our care, we seek the best ways of restraining evil for their protection. At its most basic level, Christian Nationalism amounts to nothing more than fulfilling this love towards our families and countrymen.

Unfortunately, the reaction against Christian Nationalism has produced a new crop of anabaptists among us. Like those sects born in the 16th century, these men have determined that it is unchristian to participate in government, but they have done so with a modernist twist. While the old anabaptists had sufficient integrity to eschew politics and government altogether due to their pacifism, this new batch has given Christians a very peculiar license: A Christian may indeed vote and govern, but never for the sake of restraining evil according to a Christian understanding of right and wrong.

The Idol of Moral Neutrality

Christian Nationalists identify evil in light of God’s eternal Word and natural law rather than popular consensus, academic fads, or legal tradition. Wherever laws and constitutions call good evil and evil good, we know we must work to amend them. When schools teach that evil is good and good is evil, we know we must rebuke them. If individuals wish to delight in evil whilst calling it good, we know we must work to restrain them. Christian Nationalists straightforwardly reject the religious and moral neutrality of the Postwar Consensus.

But neutrality is a popular idol among Americans. As more Christians repent of our idolatry, those who remain thralls of the Spirit of the Age don’t quietly accept our departure. “We lose down here.” “Trust not in princes!” “The Gospel is a suicide mission.” Many pious slogans are trotted out to convince Christians not to love their neighbors by defending them from evil.

They’ll use Christ’s promises of suffering for His sake to convince us that protecting our families is faithless. In their hands, the Gospel of eternal salvation becomes a means of despising his gifts of peace in the here and now. His commands to love our enemies are likewise leveraged to make us think the governmental task of restraining evil is, itself, an evil departure from God’s love. At least, they tell us this when it comes to actual sins condemned by Scripture. When it comes to violations of the Postwar Consensus like racism, sexism, or inequality, they quickly forget about losing down here.

Their blatant hypocrisy and slavish devotion to the Spirit of the Age should be sufficient reason to reject their false teachings. Even so, we cannot let this misuse of Scripture go unanswered. With the whole world screaming these deceptions at us, it’s easy for any Christian to be taken in when their leaders tell them God’s Word requires them to go along. But understanding Scripture well is the best remedy, so let’s take a look at these arguments.

Loving Your Enemies

By the reckoning of neutralists, Christian Nationalists who seek to restrain the wicked with the sword of government ipso facto cannot love their enemies. After all, how could the executioner’s blade possibly be loving? But the fact that so many of our pastors and teachers perceive a contradiction here proceeds from their failure to understand love in the first place.

Loving anyone, friend or enemy, is a matter of following God’s law. That is the form of love in day-to-day life. Plagued as we are by soft antinomianism, it should be no surprise how often this fact is overlooked. Not content with distinguishing Law from Gospel when it matters (i.e. when one questions whether he is saved) they prefer to separate them altogether. They believe the Law is God’s hatred and the Gospel his love. They therefore disregard Christ when He says “if you love me, keep my commandments,” Paul when he says “love is the fulfilling of the law,” and John when he says, “By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments.” How could they purport to love their enemies when they do not even know how?

Indeed, Christians ought to love our enemies. We must not murder them, lie to them in God’s name, covet their wives, and so forth. On the contrary, we assist their bodily needs, hold God’s name sacred before them, and help them to keep their marriages intact. As God causes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust alike, we are to fulfill our moral responsibilities to the just and the unjust alike.

Here, they think they have us caught. “The sword of government harms the body rather than provides for it! Therefore Christians must stay their hands when governing.” Once again, however, they only reveal their ignorance. For woven throughout God’s eternal law are the natural roles he ordained during creation.

These roles do not evaporate when we love our enemies. Loving an enemy like you love your wife, for example, would be adultery towards her and betrayal towards your children. The 4th Commandment likewise tells us we are to honor our father and mother in ways that we do not honor ordinary enemies or friends. Paul gave us far stricter responsibilities to our own children than to strangers–whether they are enemies or not. Even the parable of the Good Samaritan makes these kinds of distinctions plain. Who upon finding his own son beaten half-dead on the side of the road would simply drop him off at an inn and continue on his journey? How we love our neighbors therefore depends on relationships that run far deeper than friend or enemy. This is not a peculiarity, but the norm in Christian life. Loving your enemies is always a matter of vocation because loving your friends is as well.

The Fifth Commandment likewise leans heavily on vocation. “You shall not murder” does not forbid all killing because not all killing is murder. It depends on the roles of those involved. A soldier does not murder the enemy combatant he kills. Neither does the executioner murder the criminal or the father murder the man who breaks into his home at night. In such cases, killing is a true moral obligation done out of love for one’s neighbor who, whether friend or foe, is protected from evil. And if even killing can fulfill the Fifth Commandment by protecting our neighbors’ bodily well-being, then surely lesser punishments can be appropriate as well. A Christian with authority–even in the form of voting–is doing God’s work when he uses that authority to direct the sword against the wicked.

You see, “your enemy” and “the wicked” are not always synonymous, even for a Christian. This is especially true concerning the kind of severe, overt wickedness that government is ordained to suppress. The man who sues you for your tunic is your enemy, but the sword isn’t there to restrain him. The government official who gives you unpleasant work like carrying his baggage for a mile may be your enemy, but he is not necessarily a wicked man who deserves the sword. The person who insults you–even out of evil intent–may not have done anything worthy of the government’s attention. Enemies per se are therefore not the Christian’s target when he uses the sword; the wicked are. And the Christian who formulates laws to suppress evil must suppress evil done against friends and enemies alike. But evil is what God says it is–not simply what we (or our enemies) dislike.

This is what it means to love one’s enemies. We are to do what is morally right even when we would rather see harm come to those who have harmed us. To a judge, love means giving justice even to someone who hates you, not refusing to sentence murderers. To a soldier, love means feeding your prisoners of war, not opening your city gates to invaders. Christians who vote to suppress evil in such ways are likewise fulfilling the law of love. Christian Nationalists do not seek to make the sword a tool of personal vengeance against our enemies. Rather, we seek to establish a just peace within the lands God has given to our people so that all of us–friend and enemy alike–may have freedom from the wicked acts of wicked men.

Suffering for Christ’s Sake

What, then, about suffering for Christ’s sake? There is no question that our Lord promised us suffering and persecution from the world on his account. Rather than telling us to shy away from it, he taught us to embrace it, for our reward will be great in heaven. Those who would worship neutrality alongside Christ use these promises of His to accuse Christians of cowardice when they take any action to oppose evil and the suffering it causes. In their rhetoric, the work of restraining evil is inherently opposed to the Christian’s duty to take up his cross.

This view, however, is so childish it should embarrass any who hold it. Our Lord speaks of suffering inflicted on us by the world because we are His children. He is not instructing us to deliberately produce suffering by either harming ourselves or by neglecting our duties. For example, if I feel the ordinary suffering of hunger, that is my God-given reminder to fix myself dinner. Eating is not an act of cowardice or a rejection of any supposed cross of starvation. Those whose cross is hunger suffer due to circumstances like famine, poverty, or punishment, not by willful refusal of God’s gift of food. By both natural law and Holy Scripture, God has given each person the task of basic self-preservation, for as the Apostle says, if a man will not work, neither should he eat.

The same is true when it comes to threats of harm against ourselves or those in our care. There are times we must suffer violence due to circumstance or duty. Other times, we must resist violence for the sake of circumstance or duty. When the Jews attacked Jesus, He often chose to escape rather than submit to it because His time had not yet come. When that time did arrive, He laid down His life of His own accord rather than having it taken from Him. When Paul was threatened by evil men, there were times when he would likewise preserve his life by escaping. And when invading kings had stolen his nephew, Abraham raised a small army and took him back rather than abandoning Lot to his cross. For this action, Abraham was recognized and blessed by Melchizedek, priest of God Most High.

We do not endure suffering the way medieval monks did–retreating from our natural responsibilities so we can suffer self-imposed harm for the sake of false piety. We endure as we fulfill our callings. We endure as we marry, build homes, have children, love our neighbors, protect our people, and live as Christians. Suffering will inevitably come, but our crosses are given to us. We do not choose them for ourselves. If evil men threaten my family, then as a father, my cross is the grueling labor of contending against such men, not “bravely” abandoning my children to suffering and death. The same is true when evil men threaten my tribe or nation. The cowards are those who refuse their God-given duties and cover their shame by attacking faithful men.

And really, suffering is not such a rare resource that we must deliberately produce more. Christian Nationalism won’t put an end to it. If you think that worldly success and godly government will deprive us of our opportunity to suffer for Christ, fear not. When we get groomers out of schools and learn to respect our own borders, our trials will not cease. Satan will certainly not lie down in despair and retreat to Hell if Donald Trump is elected. The world and the pleasures of the flesh will still try to choke out your faith even if pornography is banned. Christian government may fulfill its godly duty of restraining evil without dreading the end of suffering. The only difference is that when we do so, we will suffer for doing good instead of for doing evil.

What About the Gospel?

But what about the Gospel? Ever since the Garden of Eden, Satan has worked to convince man that God’s Word is unsatisfactory. He has not ceased this endeavor in the modern age. Whether it’s Theological Liberalism, the Gospel Reductionism of the mid 20th-century, or the soft antinomianism of today, Christians are always tempted to abandon whichever parts of God’s Word the world finds offensive. Right now, Satan’s crosshairs are dead-center on God’s First Article gifts–creation and its ordinances.

This reductionist temptation bleeds into modern Christians’ theology of government. Those who embrace Gospel Reductionism or soft antinomianism often contend that the state can have nothing to do with Christianity because it has nothing to do with the Gospel. After all, what government provides is strictly limited to those first article gifts. They may or may not reject those gifts outright, but of what use could they be without the Gospel? Any temporal benefit comes at the price of creating a strictly outward appearance of righteousness which could turn everyone into legalistic pharisees. So clearly, Christians should therefore devote their energy to saving souls through proclamation of the Gospel while civil government should remain a wholly secular affair.

The problem is that the state doesn’t have “nothing to do with the Gospel” anymore than God’s Law has “nothing to do with the Gospel.” Lutherans distinguish Law and Gospel for a very specific purpose–to point those who question whether they are saved to the Cross for the only reliable answer. After all, if they consult the Law for that, they will only find condemnation because we all fall short. But faithful Christians never separate Law from Gospel because that question of justification is not the only thing Christians need to think about. As justified children of God, we have been given many blessings, instructions, and exhortations as we make our way towards heaven because we have a Father who loves us. Law and Gospel both proceed from the same mouth of our one God, and both bless the Christian continually because the Law no longer condemns us.

In the same way, Law and Gospel cannot be severed from one-another when it comes to government. The state does have a role to play in making disciples of all nations–it’s just not the same role as the Church’s. Can the state make people Christian by outwardly restraining wickedness? Certainly not in the way most people think. The Christian faith cannot be compelled by force–not even military force. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men cannot put our fallen nature together again. The government cannot make us righteous before God.

On the other hand, civil government can indeed make people Christian in a far more mundane way. After all, parents are the most fundamental form of civil government, and it would be foolish to contend that parents cannot make their children Christian. True, it is the Holy Spirit who creates faith in the heart of every believer, but the Holy Spirit has decided to accomplish this through means: God’s Holy Word and His Sacraments. Likewise, these means do not spontaneously generate from the ether, but are administered by men on God’s behalf and by His command. That is what the Church is for.

But Christian parents have a role here as well. As God commands, we do everything in our power to ensure that our children receive these gifts. My own parents were no exception. They brought me to be baptized. They sent me to Lutheran schools. They discouraged me from sin and evil. They raised me in the faith and prepared me to worthily receive the Sacrament of the Altar. And in doing so, God’s Proverb was fulfilled: train a child up in the way he should go, and even when he is old, he will not depart from it. It would therefore be quite appropriate to say that my parents made me a Christian–even as I simultaneously confess that the Holy Spirit called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, sanctifies, and keeps me in the one true faith. I am thankful to my parents and even more so to the God who gave them to me and used them to deliver His gifts.

As Luther points out in the Large Catechism, government is rooted in parents enlisting one-another’s aid and delegating their authority. It is ordained to assist governance among the many households within its borders. So what then happens to the parental ability to make Christians? It certainly weakens, for civil government can never take the place of parents (and it creates ungodly disaster whenever it tries.) Nevertheless, as long as government maintains its proper place of assisting parents in protecting their households by restraining the wicked and commending the good, this ability does not go away entirely.

Government cannot hold your hand as it takes you to church, but it can remove unnecessary distractions through means like blue laws. God forbid that government try to take over baptism from the Church, but it can honor the name in which we are baptized by the holy days it recognizes, the prayers its functionaries offer, and the blasphemies it punishes. It cannot preach the Word of God, but it can most certainly learn from it as it makes its judgments of what is good and what is evil. In all these senses and more, a government can be Christian, and it can serve the very Church to which its citizens belong.

Can God build His Church despite the oppression of a hostile government? Of course! He has proven time and again that no earthly power can stand against Him. And yet, His omnipotent power is not a reason to despise what He has explicitly told us about the earthly roles and earthly consequences He has ordained. Do we dare call God a liar when He tells us the fruit of raising a child properly? Do we dare call Him a liar when he speaks of the spiritual dangers of surrounding yourself with sexual immorality or men of bad character? Do we dare call Him a liar when He says he’ll punish the third or fourth generation of those who hate him? The Church is not the State, but neither does it exist in a hermetically sealed bubble. We ought not pray for God’s divine intervention out of sheer laziness–a hypocritical piety that refuses to make use of the ordinary gifts He has given.

To be sure, some Christians’ vocations are more properly restricted to the direct work of the Church. Perhaps you are a pastor and you believe your calling is exclusively to make new Christians through Word and Sacrament. May it be well with you. But if you’ve decided that government is not your business, you must hold your peace among those of us who have been given broader callings. Subjecting others to the peculiar rules of your own profession will bring them nothing but harm.

Christian Nationalist Voters May Indeed Be Saved

Christians can certainly debate whether democracy is a good form of government in general or whether it is an appropriate form of government for 21st century Americans specifically. God gave us no mandated form of government beyond Christ’s Kingship, after all. We may debate how best to restrain particular evils and commend specific goods in our own place and time. God has given us wisdom to make such decisions, and we should let iron sharpen iron as we contend for our beliefs on the subject.

But what we should never need to debate is whether government can be Christian or whether Christians may carry out its duties according to Christ’s commands. We should never need to consider whether God or popular consensus gets to delineate good from evil. And far be it from us to condemn to Hell the entire Church from Constantine to the French Revolution simply because they encouraged their rulers to kiss the Son lest He be angry. Neither should we condemn today’s Christian Nationalists who do the same. Those suggestions come from the Devil and ought to be rebuked instead. Christians should pray for God’s gift of Christian government, work towards it within the vocations he’s given us, and receive it with gratitude should He grant it to us.