Introduction
An old family friend on social media recently objected to the notion of America being a Christian nation. While he claimed it was historically inaccurate, his primary objection was that a nation can’t simply choose to be God’s covenant people. God decides who His covenant people are. God chose Israel in the Old Covenant, and He chose the Church in the New Covenant. So even if the founders of America had wanted to make a “Christian America” they couldn’t have because God does the choosing and He didn’t choose America.
While I profoundly disagree with the historical claims, I want to address the biblical-theological objection here.
Other Covenants Before God
It’s of course true that God’s Covenant of Grace was made with Israel in the Old Covenant and came into its fullness with Jesus in the Church in the New Covenant. But it’s simply not true that God only recognizes that central, saving covenant. Yes, God is the absolute Lord of salvation, and no man may saunter up to the God of the universe and offer terms of engagement for salvation. Nevertheless, there are other covenant arrangements that men may make that God recognizes because He established them in the very nature of creation. They are natural or common grace covenants.
For example, every real marriage is a covenant before God and witnesses. God makes two into one, even non-Christians. Likewise, every nation is a covenant, even if the constitution is non-Christian. God appoints magistrates, and there is no true authority except by His terms and conditions. This national covenant is a covenant in so far as God recognizes the entity of “nation,” and the leaders and members of that entity have various responsibilities and obligations before God and toward one another. Furthermore, a covenant ordinarily also involves blessing for faithfulness to those responsibilities and obligations as well as cursing for unfaithfulness.
Now to anticipate one line of objections, let me hasten to add that these covenant blessings and curses are not inherently salvific or damning. At the natural/creational level, we simply mean that God personally governs the world in such a way as to make certain actions better or worse (e.g. sending rain on the just and the unjust). National covenants and marriage covenants are in the realm of what theologians call “common grace.” So a non-Christian married couple really is in a covenant of marriage before God, whether or not they acknowledge Him or His existence or the obligations they have to one another. But even in a non-Christian marriage, where the husband generally loves and leads his wife, and the wife generally respects and follows her husband, God will bless them more than if they didn’t. It generally goes better for them, if only for the fact that they will generally like each other more and get along better. And this is simply because God makes water run downhill. In other words, this is the way God made and governs the world. You generally reap what you sow, and God made the world such that if you generally go with the flow of creation, things will go better for you. But if you fight reality, which is to say, if you fight God, like say by giving hormone suppressors to kids, things will not go so well.
At the same time, while a Christian marriage is not a sacrament, as the Roman Catholics teach, it certainly does have a massively sanctifying influence where Christ is openly acknowledged and humbly obeyed. There is a significant difference between fumbling in the dark and walking in the light. But the thing to underline is the fact that we’re all living in the same world. It’s not like you become a Christian and it turns out the pagans really were living in a different world. There is one world, God’s world, and those walking in unbelieving darkness are stumbling around in God’s world. By God’s common grace, a couple of pagans may eek out a semi-happy marriage by the force of custom or tradition, but it really is a great blessing to know the saving grace of Christ crucified for sinners, especially the married kind. Just as you might occasionally stumble into the solution to how to fix your car without any help or guidance, the gift of youtube and auto mechanic manuals really is like the gift of the Bible for our lives. Special revelation and saving grace take the gift of covenant marriage and put it into high gear. They turn the lights on.
Other Christian Covenants
Now follow this closely: if two Christians enter into a marriage covenant, isn’t it fair to call that a “Christian marriage?” And of course by that, nobody thinks we’re saying that marriage replaces the Church. Marriage is not a sacrament. Marriage is not salvific. But marriage is a kind of covenant that people can choose to enter that God recognizes. And if two Christians do so, we can refer to that covenant as a “Christian” covenant, a “Christian marriage.”
And if that’s possible in marriage, why would it not be possible for a nation? In fact, the word “covenant” is used to describe multiple political treaties in the Old Testament: Jonathan and David made a covenant of friendship that certainly had massive political implications (1 Sam. 23). David made a covenant with Abner to deliver the northern tribes into David’s rule (2 Sam. 3), and even though that initially failed, the northern tribes eventually did make a covenant with David to recognize him as their king (2 Sam. 5). Solomon and Hiram made a covenant of peace (1 Kgs. 5). King Ahab made a covenant with Ben Hadad of Syria (1 Kgs. 20). Jehoida led the rulers of Judah to make a covenant with the child king Joash (2 Kgs. 11). And of course good King Josiah made a covenant with the people of Judah to serve the Lord (2 Kgs. 23).
So quite apart from whether the founders of America were Christian (they were) or intended to establish a Christian nation (they did), the Bible is absolutely clear that it is possible to make a political, national, albeit common grace, covenant before God. And if a nation was led by Christians, who self-consciously desired to order their nation according to biblical principles (like say King Alfred in the 9th century or Scotland in the 16thcentury), wouldn’t it be fair to call that nation a “Christian nation?”
So What?
But this isn’t just a theoretical exercise. This has massive practical implications, particularly for how Christians should think about their current obligations to their nations. What obligations do politicians, magistrates, and citizens have today? Broadly speaking, there have been three answers to that question. King James (of Authorized Bible fame) and his son Charles argued for the Divine Right of Kings, claiming that God directly appoints magistrates and while there may be some room for input from the people, magistrates basically are the highest authority in the land. Any disobedience or rebellion is immoral. Thomas Hobbes argued that Christianity is a myth, and that people are basically selfish savages and civil governments are the monstrous “Leviathan” powers that keep the baser instincts in check, primarily through fear. But in his view there is no inherent shape or structure to nations. There are no rules. There is just power and fear checking selfishness. Finally, you can understand nations as natural covenants before God and subject to His law — this was the magisterial Protestant view, most explicitly asserted by the Scottish covenanters, but also more generally by men like Samuel Rutherford in Lex Rex. This view says that while nations may sometimes be led by tyrants, just like abusive husbands, there is a fundamental structure to a nation that God established at creation, and therefore laws and obligations which are natural to it, and that structure is a covenant.
Why does this matter? Well it matters because there are certain obligations and responsibilities, a certain inherent order to the whole setup. Now, ever since Jesus rose from the dead, every civil magistrate on earth is under obligation to acknowledge the Lordship of Jesus Christ and the God of Heaven. That’s what Psalm 2 says, and the apostles explicitly taught us that it was a prophecy of the death and resurrection of Jesus (Acts 4:25-26). All men everywhere are summonsed to repent and believe in Jesus because a day is coming in which He will judge the world (Acts 17:31). All men includes kings, presidents, supreme court justices, prime ministers, parliaments, dictators, sheiks, imams, and caliphs. But regardless of whether they do or not, they only have authority from Christ, and the justice they are responsible to administer is derived from Him and defined by Him.
This justice is also revealed in nature and in the image of God, and therefore, to the extent that even pagan magistrates administer true justice with equity, they are fulfilling their obligations to some extent, even if unwittingly. And it will generally go better for that nation. Likewise, the citizens of every nation are under obligation to acknowledge the Lordship of Jesus Christ and to acknowledge that their civil magistrates are appointed as ministers of justice by Him and honor that office and order. But whether they do or not, it will generally go better for them if they are righteous and obey God’s law. It’s all in Romans 13, man.
A Covenantal Nature
Just as a woman ought to obey her own husband in all things in the Lord, so too, citizens ought to obey their magistrates in the Lord. Yet, “in the Lord” really is a magnificent qualifier. It endorses all authority exercised in obedience to Christ and the way He ordered the world. It reassures those called to submit to that authority when exercised under the blessing of Christ. But it also limits all authority to those things which Christ has commanded or clearly allows. This too is part of the covenantal nature of marriage and nations.
So if your pagan neighbor lady shows up at the door with a black eye and confesses that her husband hit her because the dinner was burned, you don’t turn her away and say that you wish you could help but since her marriage isn’t “Christian” there’s nothing you can do. If they are generic secular pagans, it doesn’t matter if the husband shows up and admits that he hit her but also explains that he isn’t a Christian and therefore our rules don’t apply to him. God’s rules absolutely do apply to him, whether he acknowledges it or not because he is living in God’s world and has entered into a particular kind relationship, a marriage covenant. Likewise, it doesn’t matter if her husband shows up and proudly admits that he did hit her and that since they are Muslims, their marriage is a “Muslim Marriage.” And in Islam husbands are welcome to strike their wives.
And the same principle I’m illustrating here applies to nations. There is an inherent covenantal structure to nations because there is no authority except from God (Rom. 13), just as there is no marriage apart from God. This is why certain arrangements (like two dudes and their three pet poodles) are not married, no matter how many times they claim to be so and whether or not the Supreme Court orders it so. Likewise, there are certain terrorist organizations, mobs, thugs, and gangs that are not nations. But where there is some semblance of law and order, some semblance of agreement between rulers and the ruled, whether customary or constitutional, there are transcendent rules that government those arrangements. Stalin and Hitler cannot defend their genocides by saying that their nations are just following different rules. American cannot defend the murder of millions of babies by pointing to the laws of the land. A “nation” is not whatever you decide you want it to be, and it cannot do whatever it demands to do, any more than a man or a woman or a marriage can be whatever you want it to be.
Conclusion
Conservative Christians rightly lampooned the new supreme court justice for refusing to answer the question, “What is a woman?” claiming she couldn’t answer because she’s not a biologist. Everybody sensed the red dot of tranny rage hovering on her forehead if she didn’t fall in line with modern sexual orthodoxy. But that same red dot seems to be hovering on the foreheads of our current establishment theologians, even the so-called “Reformed” ones. What is a nation? How would I know, I’m not a political scientist. Didn’t your Risen Messiah commission you to disciple the nations? Uh, yeah, but that’s the word ethne. Right. So we have gay mirage and tranny confusion in our streets in part because we refuse to acknowledge that the public square is not neutral and not infinitely malleable. A nation is a covenant before God with obligations to administer true justice.
And for those very reasons, citizens have the right and at certain points, an obligation to object to capricious, arbitrary, and wicked laws and rulers. There is no authority apart from Christ, and if the civil authority praises the righteous and punishes evildoers, things will go well in that land. We’re not claiming that a “Christian nation” is salvific, any more than a Christian marriage is salvific. But we are claiming that a Christian nation is possible, and that a Christian nation is highly sanctifying to its citizens, in an analogous way to how a Christian marriage is sanctifying to a family. It grants more gospel light in so far as Scripture is the ultimate standard, and in so far as many involved are honestly seeking the Lord and walking before him in humility.
This is why the founders of America could rightly appeal to the God of Heaven and His laws for the justice of their cause when they declared independence from England. They were not appealing to some special, saving covenant. And they were not just venting fleshly spleen. They were appealing to the natural covenantal rights of nations based on natural and common law, affirmed and clarified in Scripture. It is that covenantal reality established by the Creator that grants all men certain unalienable rights and grants them the right and duty to alter or abolish forms of government that abuse and usurp those basic covenant rights and duties.
The kings of the nations will bring their treasures into the Heavenly Kingdom. There have been Christian nations in the past, and there will be Christian nations again in the future. Only the Christian Church is God’s special, holy nation in the New Covenant era, just as Christ has only one bride, the Christian Church, and that is the only marriage that will last forever. But between the great advents of Christ, we are still bound together in families and nations by covenants that reflect that eternal covenant, and they are covenants that God recognizes.
Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash
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