God and the Nations

Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God.

Romans 13:1

Government is God's gift to men. It was given in order to keep us from fulfilling the evil of the human heart. Every time in human history when man is at the place where he is on the verge of destroying himself, God has intervened, usually through governmental agencies or the raising up of some new nation or some new power on the earth to overturn and overthrow the plans and programs of men, and return the world to some semblance again of order and of peace. This has been God's recurrent program throughout human history. And thus we can see that the existence of nations can be viewed as God's partial answer to the disintegrating force of sin in human life. If it weren't for government, man would have ceased to exist long, long ago.

This view of human government is reflected by the apostle Paul in Romans 13. We read that governmental agencies are instituted by God, and every governmental agent is a servant of God for your good. Government is therefore the agent of the Almighty. This helps to put into proper perspective the questions that arise from time to time on the rightness or the wrongness of matters such as bearing of arms in warfare. A Christian has the perfect right to become a soldier and serve in the armed forces of his country. If he has conscientious objections to this because of his background or his training he ought to observe his conscience, but if he is instructed in the scriptures, he can easily be shown that Christians have a right to serve as soldiers, and the government in raising an army for the defense of a country is exercising its privilege as a minister of the Almighty, as an agent of God.

Though governments are ordained of God, they can perform functions in rebellion against God. But even a government that rejects God and has no recognition of God at all in any public way, isn't any less a true government ordained of God. This is reflected by Paul in Romans 13 when he writes concerning the government. He says these powers are ordained of God, and at the time he wrote, the Emperor on the throne of Rome was Nero, the most monstrous wretch that had ever sat upon the Imperial throne; yet Paul recognized him as an agent of God.

God rules among the nations whether they know it or not. If a nation refuses to recognize its utter dependence upon God and the need for His wisdom and power, then all the forces that operate within it operate to its destruction, and it will ultimately destroy itself. History confirms it and the Bible declares it. The nation that remembers God is the nation whose God is Lord.

Father, thank you for my beloved nation. I pray that I may look to you as the one who holds all nations in the palm of your hand. May I recognize that you are able to use them, turn them, change them, and move them at will.