What does the Bible say about civil disobedience? Furthermore, is Christian activism an expression of the spiritual life of the believer in Christ? Let’s consider this subject in the light of an incident involving Peter and John in the book of Acts:And seeing the man who had been healed standing with them, they had nothing to say in reply.
But when they had ordered them to go aside out of the Council, they began to confer with one another,
saying, "What shall we do with these men? For the fact that a noteworthy miracle has taken place through them is apparent to all who live in Jerusalem, and we cannot deny it.
"But in order that it may not spread any further among the people, let us warn them to speak no more to any man in this name."
And when they had summoned them, they commanded them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus.
But Peter and John answered and said to them, "Whether it is right in the sight of God to give heed to you rather than to God, you be the judge;
for we cannot stop speaking what we have seen and heard." (Acts 4:14-20)
Peter and John would not submit to the Sanhedrin’s request to stop preaching Christ. Although the authority of the Sanhedrin was greatly diminished during the Roman occupation, the Roman government, for political purposes, allowed this council quite a bit of jurisdiction to govern the affairs of the people. This is how the Jewish leaders were able to play such a large part in the persecution of believers in Christ. How ironic it is that the very officials who should have recognized and welcomed Messiah were committed to silencing those who would speak of Him.
The leaders of Israel were certainly out of line in commanding the disciples not to speak and teach in the name of Jesus. Jesus was, in fact, the One whom the leaders should have been obeying. No government, not even a Gentile government, is justified in attempting to suppress the gospel message or Bible doctrine. Christians are to always obey God over man. In times when freedom to evangelize is limited by the tyranny of government, believers are to continue to preach Christ. This calls for discretion and wisdom, and for sensitivity to the leading of the Holy Spirit.
Because of the rejection of divine principles of establishment by the populace of the USA, and because so many believers in this nation have rejected Bible doctrine, we may soon suffer economic collapse and military defeat, finding ourselves facing fierce oppression and persecution from an occupying nation. If this happens, believers must recognize that God will provide for believers who choose to fulfill the spiritual life. The plan of God will move forward, including evangelism and the dissemination of Bible doctrine, as it did through Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, Azariah and others during the time which Judah was occupied by the Chaldeans. God will always be faithful to provide opportunities by which the lost can be saved and believers can advance in the spiritual life. And believers, regardless of what adversity there may be, must never compromise spiritual principles. All of us, at one time or another, will face a situation which will involve making a choice between what is God’s direct will and what is man’s. God never honors compromise!
On the other hand, believers in Jesus Christ are to realize that the spiritual agenda does not include Christian activism or civil disobedience for the sake of protest. Peter and John were not disobeying the instructions of the Sanhedrin to make a political statement or to cause political or social change. Nor were they lobbying to pressure the Sanhedrin into making conditions more favorable for believers in Christ. They were teaching and preaching Christ.
The ministry of Jesus as recounted in the gospels was never about political or social activism. Jesus totally rejected political clout as a means of advancing His agenda, because God’s love for the human race could not be revealed through the force of human legislation. Likewise, activism was never a part of the function of the spiritual community recorded in Acts.
THE CHRISTIAN NATION FALLACY
Today, those of the Christian right assume that Christians should be working to “take back this country.” They propose that if Christians work together, we can win back the control of the institutions that supposedly have been seized from them over the past decades. They are zealously attempting to establish (or supposedly return to) a “Christian nation.”
However, the very idea of a Christian state is ludicrous, because a genuine relationship with God can only occur through free volition with no compulsion of any kind. Only an individual can become a Christian. All attempts to establish a Christian state have reaped disastrous results. For example, when Constantine became emperor of Rome (AD 307-337), he became a self-styled advocate for the Christian faith. He bestowed many favors on the Church. The government began to provide money for the operation of the Church. The clergy became exempt from public service. By 380, Theodosius I issued an edict that established Christianity as the exclusive religion of the state. Punishment from the state was suffered by any who maintained another form of worship. As the Church became more and more politically powerful she plunged deeper and deeper into apostasy. The world seemed to be getting better and better. It looked as if Christ's kingdom had already come. Christians began to think it was the Millennium and that Christ would come back at the end of a thousand year reign of the Church to congratulate the Church for a job well done. What a contrast to the way Jesus had responded at the inauguration of His ministry, when Satan offered Him "all the kingdoms of the world, and their glory" (Matthew 4:8). The temptation to Christ's humanity was something like this: "Jesus, wouldn't Your ministry be much more effective if You have the support of human government at Your disposal?" Jesus never used human government to advance His work! The same was true of both Peter and Paul. Do you remember what Jesus said when He stood before Pilate?
Jesus answered, "My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, then My servants would be fighting, that I might not be delivered up to the Jews; but as it is, My kingdom is not of this realm." (John 18:36)
In the Koine Greek, the word translated "of" is ek, "out from." Jesus was saying, "My kingdom is not out from this world system." He was not denying that His kingdom would be a political earthly kingdom when it is established. Far from it. He was asserting that the source of its establishment will not be human agency, including human government. The Messianic Kingdom will be given to the Son by the Father. It will come in God's timing, through the destruction of human governments (Daniel 2:44). In the meantime, the Kingdom of God does not ride on the coattails of human government!
THE CHURCH AND THE CONSTITUTION
Many in the Christian right maintain that the Constitution of our nation was designed to perpetuate a Christian order. They attribute the problems of America to the separation of the intended fusion of church and state. What many people do not know is that the Christian right wants to take us "back" to a USA that never was! The "Christian state" view they are pushing is not the concept that was held by the founding fathers, but rather the view of religious groups who governed some of the colonies prior to the framing of the Constitution. It was the tyranny of such administrations that our founders vehemently resisted!
Two of the most prominent figures of the founding generation of our nation, Patrick Henry and Benjamin Franklin, were students of the teachings of the English philosopher John Locke (1632-1704). Locke believed that the purpose of government is to protect life, liberty, and property, but not to propagate or defend religious truths or protect religious values. Locke's Letters Concerning Toleration had a tremendous impact on the minds of the colonists with regard to the importance of the separation of church and state. He observed that it is "necessary to distinguish exactly the business of civil government from that of religion, and to settle the just bounds that lie between the one and the other."[1]
While most of those who founded our nation were very concerned about protecting the proper role of government from religious tyranny, there were others who influenced the shaping of the Constitution, who understood the wisdom of the separation of Church and state from a different angle. There are many Americans today who, if they checked their history books, would be surprised to discover that there was actually an undercurrent of religious leaders within the colonies who were very determined to keep the church separate from the state. Perhaps the greatest influence on their thinking was the turmoil caused by a well known pastor named Roger Williams (1603-1683), the founder of the Baptist church in America and also the founder of Providence, Rhode Island.[2] Williams migrated from England to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1631, before John Locke was even born. Quite the radical for his day, Williams criticized religious intolerance, insisting that the magistrates had no authority over an individual's religion, and he opposed a state church. He was banished from Massachusetts Bay in 1636, which led to the founding of his own colony. Though Williams believed that unbelievers might rule in governmental positions as capably as believers, his primary concern was not for the state, but for the church. He was convinced that the state could not touch anything to do with the Church without corrupting it. The surprising thing is that in church doctrine he was in agreement, for the most part, with those who had banished him. More than a century later, when the Constitution and Bill of Rights were drafted, many religious leaders in the colonies had been persuaded by Williams' argument for the separation of church and state, and their convictions were surely known by our founders.
So, the principle of the separation of church and state, so fundamental to our Constitution, was derived not only from those who understood that a religious state would be tyrannical, but also from believers who were determined to protect the purity of Bible doctrine. Both camps were right!
And when they had threatened them further, they let them go (finding no basis on which they might punish them) on account of the people, because they were all glorifying God for what had happened;
for the man was more than forty years old on whom this miracle of healing had been performed. (Acts 4:21-22)
Peter and John were thus providentially protected from immediate danger. God will protect and provide for every believer until it is time to go home to be with the Lord (Psalm 68:19-20). His protection and provision are not always the means we would choose for ourselves, but we can be sure of this: We will be sustained until it is time to go home to be with the Lord; and when it is time to go—it is time to go!
GOD REMOVES HEROD—WITHOUT ANY HELP
There is another event in the book of Acts which should help us consider Christian activism and the spiritual life. This takes place after Peter is supernaturally delivered from prison by God:
Now when day came, there was no small disturbance among the soldiers as to what could have become of Peter.
When Herod had searched for him and had not found him, he examined the guards and ordered that they be led away to execution. Then he went down from Judea to Caesarea and was spending time there.
Now he was very angry with the people of Tyre and Sidon; and with one accord they came to him, and having won over Blastus the king’s chamberlain, they were asking for peace, because their country was fed by the king’s country.
On an appointed day Herod, having put on his royal apparel, took his seat on the rostrum and began delivering an address to them.
The people kept crying out, “The voice of a god and not of a man!”
And immediately an angel of the Lord struck him because he did not give God the glory, and he was eaten by worms and died. (Acts 12:18-23)
It is quite interesting how the arrogant ruler, Herod Agrippa I, died. Did it take Christian activism to bring him down? Absolutely not. In fact, there is a conspicuous absence of Christian activism in the New Testament. We don’t have to worry about changing the environment or changing society. We don’t have to worry about the resistance we will face, even from evil people in government, as we go forward with the ministry of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:18). God will remove any obstacles that need to be removed, while leaving some obstacles in our path to challenge us so that we can grow to spiritual maturity and provide testimony for the prosecution in the appeal trial of Satan.[3] God’s plan will go forward. If Christian activism is not the way to go, then what is it that believers should be doing? A.R. Knapp offers the biblical solution:
“Christians may be inclined to two distorted courses of action, or inaction, as the case may be. We are prone either to attempt to 'take America for Jesus' and try to force upon the American public the Christian ethic, which they are incapable of truly fulfilling without regeneration and the power of the Holy Spirit, or we may be tempted to simply wait for some inevitable institutional persecution which, we say, is required to purify the Church. First Timothy 2:1-4 suggests another alternative. It is actively supplicating, praying, petitioning God to intervene on behalf of all men, but primarily those in office or in positions of authority (in our own case in the U.S.A., those in the executive, judicial and legislative branches of our government) so that God’s divine counsel will sovereignly prevail as He guides the mentality and decisions of those civil leaders. The result of God’s intervention in this way, at the request of His priesthood (i.e. all believers in that nation who make up His spiritual house) (1 Peter 2:5), is the strengthening of the walls of His protective and providential institutions so that local churches, and true Christianity at large, may go on quietly and peaceably—not as loud political bullies, but as progressive, effective believers in Christ, fulfilling the Christian life as God designed it—operating in spiritual integrity and anonymity.”[4]
Consider the fact that when Paul wrote the passage cited by Knapp, 1 Timothy 2:1-4, Nero was in authority over the Empire. Nero was one of the cruelest and most evil emperors. It was under the administration of Nero that Paul would eventually be executed, under the sovereignty and wisdom of God. That was God’s plan for His witness, Paul. During the years of Paul’s ministry, the Empire was under government that was very corrupt because of evil—yet Paul never suggested Christian activism as a solution—nor did Peter. As believers in Christ we have the wonderful privilege of participating in the fulfillment of God’s sovereign purpose through intercessory prayer, and through our ambassadorial function (2 Corinthians 5:20). Christian activism is the result of ignorance of what constitutes the spiritual life.
Even believers who are negative toward God’s word cannot hinder the plan of God from going forward—they only disqualify themselves from the greater blessings in both time and eternity that are received through positive volition toward His Word. Christians who are seduced into becoming Christian activists are some of the greatest losers of all time, because they are distracted from the spiritual life. Ironically, many of them go on for years thinking that their activity is fulfilling the spiritual life!
But the word of the Lord continued to grow and to be multiplied. (Acts 12:24)
The Word of God continued to go forward. Persecution did not stop the ministry of the Word of God.
Footnotes:
1. Quoted in Clarence B. Carson, Basic American Government (Wadly: American Text Book Committee, 1993), p. 149
2. The influence of Williams and his followers on the framing of our constitution is well documented in The Godless Constitution: The Case Against Religious Correctness, by Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore, published by W.W. Norton & Company.
3. See article, “The Angelic Conflict and the Appeal Trial of Satan” on this website.
4. A.R. Knapp, The Tottering Lampstand (Pittsburgh: Greater Grace Church, 1989), pp. 133-134.
Scripture quotations taken from the NASB. www.lockman.org
This article is a revised excerpt from “Then the Proconsul Believed: A study of the Acts of the Apostles, Volume I—Acts Chapters 1—13,” by Lee Griffith, available free of charge, upon request.
Copyright © 2006 Lee Griffith. All rights reserved.
