Tony Evans - God and Government (10/21/2022)
God has established four covenants—personal, family, church, and national—and civil government exists as His ordinance to create a safe, just, righteous, and compassionate environment for freedom. From Romans 13:1-4 and other Scriptures, the preacher stresses that kingdom voters must prioritize God’s person and policies over party loyalty, holding leaders accountable as God’s ministers to reflect divine rule in society.
God’s Four Covenantal Relationships
In God’s kingdom, He has four covenantal relationships. A personal covenant, where you pledge fidelity to Him as an individual. A family covenant, where marriage and the family place themselves under His covenant. Then there would be the church covenant, where a body of believers place themselves underneath Him. And then there was the concept of the national covenant.
And it was in our Pledge of Allegiance—“one nation under God.” That would be the assumption that if this nation would be undivided, if it would be one, if it would be jam-packed with liberty and justice for every citizen, then it would have to be covenanted underneath God.
Let me put it in another way. The assumption was, if God was not a part of the equation, then unity would be in trouble, liberty would be in trouble, and justice would be in trouble, because the relationship to God was not as it ought to be.
Understanding Covenant
A covenant is a divinely created relational bond. It is an agreement that one of those four entities—or all four—agree to be covered by God, because a covenant is designed to cover.
It is incumbent upon Christians to first and foremost ascribe themselves not to a political party, but to the superintending governance of God through civil government. It is to the degree that we operate under this umbrella, under this alignment with God—when it comes to your voting and your participation in the politics of the day—whether you lean Democrat or Republican, it is your kingdom-centeredness, because you are covenantally aligned, that should influence, guide, and govern your vote.
God’s Ordinance of Authority
The Bible makes it clear in Romans chapter 13, verse 1: “Every person is to be in subjection to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God. And those which exist are established by God. Therefore, whoever resists authority has opposed the ordinance of God, and they who have opposed will receive condemnation upon themselves.”
Okay, I hope you caught that. If you want the right kind of government, God must be in the equation. Let me put it another way. The further you remove God’s person and God’s policies—because a lot of folk believe in God’s person who ignore His policies—then you have removed yourself from the place of blessing and covering as a nation.
Or to put it another way, the further you remove God’s person and policies from what a government believes, how a government operates, the character of the leaders who make up that government, then you have removed yourself from divine blessing. No matter how much you pray and no matter how much you use the God word, He says then you have messed with God’s authority and you have messed with God’s ordinance.
God’s Involvement in Politics
The Bible is pregnant with politics. From Genesis to Revelation, you see God all up in politics—setting up governments, taking down governments, giving laws, judging lawbreakers. He is all up in politics and nations. He makes it a comprehensive statement: “All authorities,” plural. That means your mayor, your city council. That means your state legislature. That means your governor. That means your House of Representatives. That means your Senate. That means your president—all authorities.
To the degree that they are aligned with God’s person and God’s policies is to the degree you will have a unified nation, a free nation, a just nation, and a righteous nation. Conversely, to the degree you are unaligned is to the degree that chaos will replace order.
The biblical role of civil government, as outlined in Romans 13, is to maintain a safe, just, righteous, and compassionately responsible environment for freedom to flourish. You cannot remove God’s perspective from government and have an ordered society. It will either become a chaotic environment, it will become anarchy, it will become oppressive, it will become so free that there are no standards. I mean, it will go all over the place because there is no superintending standard by which you are measuring how you approach the concept of voting.
Theocracy, Not Ecclesiocracy
Now, people, when they hear that, get a little nervous because they say, “Evans, are you purporting a theocracy?” Well, let me explain something. You are too late. The Bible declares that the world is already a theocracy because the Bible declares that God rules over all. In fact, Psalm 22:28 says, “The kingdom is the Lord’s and He rules over the nations.” So God is already ruling over everything.
What ought to concern you is an ecclesiocracy—that is, where a particular religion or a particular faith governs the society. But you cannot have God removed and have an ordered society, because then you wind up with homocracy—that is, where man is seeking to replace God in the name of government.
So I want you to get this perspective: Leave God out, government is in trouble, so the citizenry is in trouble. Bring God in—policies and person—then you have a much more ordered environment in which to live and fulfill the role of safety, justice, righteousness, and compassion, all working together to help a hurting nation like ours right now.
Government Mirroring God
Now, the idea of government is to mirror or to reflect the image of God for the well-being of society. Romans chapter 1, verses 18 to 32: He says because they no longer wanted to retain the knowledge of God—they did not want His perspective anymore—God released them, turned them over, and He allowed decay to enter their world and their society.
If you are tired of decay as a kingdom voter, as a representative of the King, then that means you are going to take seriously this responsibility to vote God back in and His perspective—which means your vote holds rule accountable, whether they are Democrats or Republicans, to His perspective on whatever the issue is.
But as long as the evil one can keep us illegitimately divided by making us more Democrat than Christian or more Republican than Christian—make our alliances more to homocracy than the rule of God—then we are aiding and abetting the deterioration and the destruction of the culture.
Kingdom Independence in Voting
Now in our series we will get to some of the specific issues, but I want you to get this framework because I want you to be a kingdom independent. What I am saying to you is government is not only a political enterprise; it is a sacred enterprise because it involves God. It is a spiritual enterprise.
What discourages me is when the spiritual is brought up, people get offended. They do not want to hear it. When you bring what God says about justice or brutality or race or life, they start going into “I think, I feel, or my opinion is.” No, you do not get to have an opinion that disagrees with God. You may have it, but you need to switch it, change it. Because if government belongs to God, you better get His opinion and adjust your opinion.
Now you have a framework. If you are going to be a kingdom voter, then you are going to partner with God in your vote and His definition of civil government to maintain a safe, just, righteous, and compassionately responsible environment for freedom to flourish.
God’s Ordinances and Standards
You know, He talks about the ordinance of God in verse 2. In other words, God has rules, right? The ordinance of God. You do not make up rules even when it comes to government. You find out His rules and you obey those ordinances, those governing guidelines.
That is why the Pledge of Allegiance and the idea of America is so great—because it recognized that there are inalienable rights given by the Creator that belong to all men, and that if we are under God, we benefit from that. This country said it was God’s house. We said “one nation under God.” Said, “We are going to be God’s house.”
If you are going to be God’s house, then it does not matter what everybody else says if the head of the house has spoken on any given subject. And so God is calling a nation of citizens to recognize His rules.
He goes on to say, “For rulers are not a cause for fear for good behavior, but for evil”—that is safety, but that is also righteousness. He says there is good behavior, there is bad behavior. Well now wait a minute. If there is good behavior and bad behavior, who is defining what is good and what is bad? Because once everybody gets to define it as they think it is, then you can have competing definitions of goodness. Good is because God says it is good. Bad is because God says it is bad.
That is why the Ten Commandments was “You shall not.” He was giving a standard of good and bad. That is why we have laws—to give a standard of good and bad. He says that those ordinances come from God.
Leaders as Ministers of God
The Bible says in Deuteronomy 4:8 that nations became great because they followed God’s righteous laws. If we are going to experience help and healing in our country, then your vote has to vote for God’s way—whether you vote for Democrat or Republican—because once you come out the booth, you are only going to follow God’s prescription, as we will see defined as we go along.
So He calls those who are in power—the political leaders—verse 4: “For it is a minister,” referring to the rulers, “of God to you for good. But if you do what is evil, be afraid, for it does not bear the sword for nothing; for it is a minister of God, an avenger who brings wrath on the one who practices evil.”
Guess what He calls a civil leader? A minister. I know we think of ministers as preachers, right? The person behind the pulpit—and that is a minister. In fact, every Christian is called to be a minister on some level—but He calls now civil servants “ministers,” and not only calls them “minister,” He calls them “ministers of God.”
Holding Leaders Accountable
Now we know in the ministry you can have a bad minister and you can have a good minister. They still give him the title minister, but that does not mean they are good ministers; it just means they hold the position of minister. The job of Christians is to call them into account—personally and policy-wise—to be good ministers. You do not just pick policy and skip person. You do not just get person and grab policy, because the ordinances are in the hands of the minister, and the minister is a person. He says they are a ruler—you call for both.
Some people talk about policy, some people talk about person. No, if you are going to be a minister of God, you are supposed to be a good one in both categories. He says they are to represent God in good. He says they do not bear the sword in vain. Why? Because you want a safe, just, and righteous environment. Because freedom cannot flourish if there is no safety, if there is no righteousness, and if there is no just justice.
And so He calls on them to hold and administer a standard of righteousness. In fact, 1 Timothy 2:2 says to pray for your leaders—pray for your politicians—that they may create an environment of peace. And so we are to hold our leaders accountable for the peacefulness of the environment in which we live.
The Divine Standard for Voting
So what is our standard? What are we going to use to judge it? Is it what I think, how I feel, how I was raised, what I prefer? You have got Democrats, you have got Republicans, you have got Libertarians, you have got this issue, that issue, two parts of the same issue. You have got police, you have got community, and you have got arguments coming at both sides. You have got this politician, that politician, and it is coming at us—and sometimes you do not know which world you are in. You fluctuate: “Well, I like this over here, but I do not like that over there. I like this over here, but I do not like that over there,” and you can wind up being totally confused.
So you need a tool—something to help you discriminate through all the muck and mire of the confusion as you consider who you are going to vote for. You need a tool. That tool has to be the divine standard on each issue.
Your first question is not who you are going to vote for—that is a secondary question. I know it is the one we talk about. The first question is, who does God want me to vote for?
Now, based on the issues, every Christian still will not vote the same, but they should ask the same question because you are a kingdom independent. What is the tool? What is the Scripture saying about the issue? And you go to that first, and you do not get mad if the Scripture says something other than you think or believe. You affirm yourself to the sovereignty of God because He rules the nations.
And I love Proverbs 8:15: He says, “By me kings reign. By me kings reign.” So if you want a king to rule right, a politician to rule correct, He says they have got to rule by Me. I set the standard.
God’s Comprehensive Guidance
Government is to execute safety. Ecclesiastes 8:11 says this just execution of safety should be done quickly so that people do not have to live in fear. It must be done justly, however. But then it says in chapter 12, verse 19, when government does this, you cannot take personal retribution. He says that.
So this principle of government—God has covered everything. There is not one issue in government that you can come up with to which God has not given a precept or a principle to govern how you should view that issue.
And if only Christians would vote with that covenantal worldview in mind, the Bible says in Isaiah chapter 5, verses 20 and 21, that when people call good evil and evil good and they get this thing all mixed up, then it says confusion comes and people are discombobulated.
Isaiah chapter 8, verse 20 says if you bypass God’s rule, you do not have the dawn. In other words, you cannot see straight. And I think there is a lot of blindness today—all around both parties, on the police side, on the citizen side, everywhere there is blindness. Why? Because people have not decided to keep God in government, which is what the Scripture says you must do.
“Therefore,” He says, “it is necessary to be in subjection not only because of wrath, but also for conscience sake.”
Kingdom Voting and National Healing
God must be included in government in order to have government function in a way God designed it to function—to promote the good, to keep evil from proliferating, and let Him decide what is good and what is not good.
Psalm 72:11—I love this verse—says He wants all leaders and all nations to serve Him. A kingdom voter brings a biblical worldview to the ballot box. A kingdom voter votes for the person and the policies that will best advance the kingdom of God and the definition of civil government that I have articulated for you today. That is what kingdom voting is all about.
Now, that will affect your view of justice. That will affect your view of discrimination. That will affect your view of abortion. Yes, that will affect your view of marriage. Yes, that will affect your view of taxation. All of that—because guess what? God has got a view on all that. He does not have—he has more than a view; He has a rule.
And if you and I would take this rule seriously, then Christians could lead the way. Because you know, as you have heard me say, Christians are one of the major problems because we have not been kingdom-minded; we have been more cultural-minded and political party-minded, that we have not set the stage, and so we have contributed to the chaos greatly.
But now is a time, in the midst of the chaos, that we can step forward and set a new temperature.
In Genesis chapter 11, the first 9 verses, God let there be confusion in the land because they wanted society without Him. And the Bible says, “And so there was confusion.” You leave Him out of your vote—of our votes—on person and policy, there will be more confusion in the land. And we are the ones who have what God thinks.
But what we have done is we have allowed our own identities, our own races, our own preferences to keep us from taking a comprehensive stand on righteousness and justice in the life of our society.
So you remove being under God—we remove being under God—we will discover we are a nation gone under. We remove under God in practice, we will be a nation gone under. You are seeing it; it is right before your eyes.
But God has given us a brief opportunity to turn this thing around if we will operate as a nation covenantally as kingdom voters.
You know, it reminds me of how we view God. We hold Him in high esteem—“In God We Trust,” it is on our money. “One nation under God” is in our Pledge of Allegiance. In our Declaration of Independence, we say “by our Creator.”
We begin political events with invocations; we close them with benedictions. He is held in high esteem, but when it comes to how the nation operates—and often how Christians vote—He has no clout at all. We could care less what He thinks, what He says, and how He feels about it, because this is how I feel and what I think.
And we will keep Him in position because we will go to church. We will sing our songs. We will wave our hand in the air like we just do not care. We will give Him position while ripping Him of power.
If you and I want to see a nation healed and helped, then we must not extract God from government. And that should be manifested in your thinking as you go into the voting booth.
The Bible makes it clear that God is the author of government. The government was established by God to bring His perspective to the ordering of society. The biblical definition of civil government is to maintain a safe, just, righteous, and compassionately responsible environment for freedom to flourish. This government perspective God has established leaders to implement as His ministers—as those who are acting on His behalf to fulfill that definition.
The closer a government is to God’s person and principles, the more ordered society will be. The further government is from God’s person and principles, the more chaos society will have. This is why it is critical that we have government and governmental leaders who not only believe in God but want to reflect His principles in society.