Devotional 123: Civil Government: God Ordains the Magistrate for the Good of All

The Confession Read

God, the supreme Lord and King of all the world, hath ordained civil magistrates, to be, under him, over the people, for his own glory, and the public good: and, to this end, hath armed them with the power of the sword, for the defense and encouragement of them that are good, and for the punishment of evildoers.

— Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 23, Section 1

Introduction

When the apostle Paul took up his pen in Corinth, toward the end of his third missionary journey, and began to dictate the letter we know as the epistle to the Romans, he was writing to believers who lived in the shadow of an uncomfortable fact. The man sitting on the imperial throne of Rome was Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, known to history as Nero, who would soon order the first great imperial persecution of the church and whose name would become a byword for cruelty. And yet it was under this very emperor, in the years before the persecution began in earnest, that Paul wrote: "Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God" (Romans 13:1). Paul knew what kind of man occupied the throne. He was neither naive about Nero's character nor blind to the suffering soon to break upon the church. And yet the apostolic instruction stood, and stands still: the civil authority, even in the hands of a Nero, is an ordinance of God, and the Christian conscience is bound to honour it. This is the hard truth with which the Westminster Confession, in the twenty-third chapter now opening before us, begins its treatment of the civil magistrate. The section is a single dense sentence, every clause freighted with theological conviction and practical consequence. It declares, first, that God, the supreme Lord and King of all the world, has ordained civil magistrates; second, that these magistrates are placed "under him, over the people"; third, that their purpose is twofold: God's own glory and the public good; and fourth, that God has armed them with the power of the sword, a delegated authority to defend those who do good and to punish evildoers. This is a striking statement, and its implications reach into every corner of the Christian's relationship with the state, with authority, and with the God whose sovereignty extends over every throne and every parliament and every magistracy that has ever existed. We live in a time when it has become hard for many Christians to hold these truths together. On one side stands the temptation toward what our forebears would have called Erastianism: an uncritical baptising of the state, an assumption that whatever the government does must be right because the government did it. On the other side stands the temptation toward anarchism in its modern form: a deep distrust of every institution, a conviction that authority is always corrupt and that the righteous response to every policy with which we disagree is defiance. The Confession steers a narrow path between these errors, and it does so not by political calculation but by theological conviction. The civil magistrate is neither divine nor demonic. He is a creature, and a fallen creature at that, but he is a creature whom God has raised up, invested with authority, and called to serve a purpose. To understand that purpose, and to understand our duty toward those who exercise it, is a pressing task of Christian ethics in any age, and perhaps especially in our own.

Scripture Foundation

The apostle Paul's teaching in Romans 13 stands at the centre of this doctrine, and we must examine it with care, for it is the lens through which the Divines read every other biblical text on the subject. "Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers," Paul writes. "For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation. For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same: for he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil" (Romans 13:1–4). Every word in this passage is chosen with precision. The verb Paul uses for "ordained" (tetagmenai, the perfect passive participle of tassō) carries the sense of an arrangement, an ordering, a disposition of things by a sovereign hand. The powers that exist are not merely permitted by God, as though He had left the world to run on its own steam and now glances at it with benign indifference; they are appointed, deliberately and actively, by the God who governs all things. And the magistrate, Paul says, is a diakonos — a minister, a servant — of God. The word appears three times in these four verses, and each occurrence drives the point deeper: the magistrate, whatever his own intentions, is serving a purpose that he did not create and cannot repeal. He is God's diakonos for good, God's diakonos bearing the sword, God's diakonos executing wrath. The same word that describes the office of a deacon in the church describes the office of the emperor on the throne. But Paul goes further still. The magistrate "beareth not the sword in vain." The Greek word here is machaira, and it refers not to the long broadsword of the battlefield but to the short sword worn by the Roman lictors, the officers who attended the magistrates and carried the visible symbol of their authority to punish. Paul is describing the power of capital punishment, the ultimate sanction that the state possesses. And he says, with apostolic authority, that the magistrate who wields this sword is doing the work of God. The sword is not an unfortunate necessity that we must tolerate until the kingdom comes; it is a positive good, an instrument of divine justice, a gift of common grace to a fallen world. "He is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil." The word "revenger" — ekdikos — speaks of the administration of justice, the public vindication of right against wrong. The magistrate is not acting on his own behalf; he is acting as the agent of a God who has promised, from the days of Noah, that blood unjustly shed will be required. That Noahic charter, recorded in the earliest chapters of Genesis, provides the deepest root of civil authority in Scripture. After the flood, when God established His covenant with Noah and with all creation, He gave this command: "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man" (Genesis 9:6). Here, before the calling of Abraham, before the giving of the law at Sinai, before the establishment of Israel as a nation, God lays down a principle that is universal in its scope and permanent in its duration. The sanctity of human life, grounded as it is in the image of God, requires the protection of human government. The sword that the magistrate bears is not a concession to human sinfulness, though it is certainly occasioned by it; it is, more fundamentally, a testimony to human dignity. Because man is made in the image of God, the taking of a man's life is a crime of infinite gravity, and the magistrate who punishes it is vindicating not merely the rights of the victim but the honour of the Creator. The book of Proverbs turns the focus from the origin of authority to its exercise. In the eighth chapter, Wisdom personified declares: "By me kings reign, and princes decree justice. By me princes rule, and nobles, even all the judges of the earth" (Proverbs 8:15–16). The Hebrew preposition is bî — "by me," "through me," "in my strength." The reign of kings is not an accident of history, not a lucky outcome of the social contract, not a provisional arrangement that men have cobbled together until a better one comes along. It is a function of the divine wisdom that orders all things. The same Wisdom that laid the foundations of the earth and marked out the channels of the sea has also appointed the structures of human government. And the consequence is that every ruler, however powerful he may appear to be, is himself ruled. He rules by Wisdom, not apart from it, not beyond it, not above it. His authority is real, but it is derived. He holds a sword, but the sword was placed in his hand by Another. The prophet Daniel, writing from the heart of the Babylonian empire, presses this truth to its most uncomfortable conclusion. In his interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar's dream, he declares that the living God "changeth the times and the seasons: he removeth kings, and setteth up kings" (Daniel 2:21). And then, in the fourth chapter, as the judgment falls upon the proud king, a voice from heaven proclaims that the purpose of this humbling is "to the intent that the living may know that the most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will, and setteth up over it the basest of men" (Daniel 4:17). The "basest of men" — the phrase is arresting. God does not merely raise up the wise and the virtuous to govern; He sometimes raises up the worst of men, the basest of men, the men whose rule seems to serve no purpose but to chasten and to humble. And He does so for the same reason that He does everything: that the living may know that He, and He alone, is sovereign. Nebuchadnezzar had looked out over Babylon and said, "Is not this great Babylon, that I have built for the house of the kingdom by the might of my power, and for the honour of my majesty?" (Daniel 4:30). Within the hour, the voice came, and the king was eating grass like an ox. The lesson could hardly be clearer. Every earthly authority exists at the pleasure of a higher authority, and when the higher speaks, all the lower powers must yield. The apostle Peter, writing to believers scattered through the provinces of Asia Minor, echoes Paul's teaching and adds his own distinctive emphasis. "Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake: whether it be to the king, as supreme; or unto governors, as unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of evildoers, and for the praise of them that do well" (1 Peter 2:13–14). The phrase that Peter uses for "ordinance of man" is anthrōpinē ktisei — a human institution, a human creation. Peter is fully aware that the state is a human arrangement, a product of human reason and human history. And yet he commands submission to it, not because the state is divine, not because the king is always right, but "for the Lord's sake" — dia ton Kyrion. The Christian submits to the magistrate, Peter tells us, not out of fear of the magistrate, not out of admiration for the magistrate, not out of a naive belief that the magistrate will always act wisely, but out of reverence for the Lord who appointed the magistrate and who will hold the magistrate to account. The same Christ who said to Pilate, "Thou couldest have no power at all against me, except it were given thee from above" (John 19:11), is the Christ for whose sake we honour the authority that Pilate abused.

What the Divines Meant

The opening clause of the Confession's statement establishes the foundation on which everything else rests. "God, the supreme Lord and King of all the world, hath ordained civil magistrates." The order of these words is deliberate and theologically precise. Before the confession says anything about the magistrate, before it describes his powers, his duties, or his limits, it first identifies God as "the supreme Lord and King." There is a throne above every throne, a sovereignty over every sovereignty, a crown that surpasses every crown. The civil magistrate does not hold absolute authority; he holds authority that is real but subordinate, genuine but bounded, delegated by the One whose kingdom is over all. The point is not merely theoretical. The great political question of the seventeenth century, the question that had convulsed England through civil war, was precisely this: Is the king accountable to any higher power? The Confession's answer is unequivocal. The king is accountable, and so is every lesser magistrate, and so is every parliament and every council and every judge. They are all "under him." They answer to a higher throne, and they will all, one day, give an account to the King of kings. "Under him, over the people." Those five words, set between two commas, capture the entire political theology of the Reformation in miniature. The magistrate is under God and over the people. He is not a god himself, and he is not a mere functionary of the popular will. His authority is real — it is genuinely over the people, carrying the power of command and the sanction of the sword — but it is derived. He does not possess authority in himself; he holds it in trust from the God who appointed him. This double relationship, upward to God and downward to the people, defines both the magistrate's dignity and his accountability. He is high enough to be owed obedience, but not so high that his obedience to God can be neglected without consequence. Robert Shaw, whose Exposition of the Confession of Faith has served generations of Reformed students, puts the matter with his characteristic clarity: "The magistrate's authority is derived from God, and limited by His will. He has no right to command anything contrary to the law of God, and when he does so, the duty of obedience ceases." But Shaw immediately adds the qualification that has preserved Reformed political thought from the twin errors of absolutism and anarchism: "Yet even then, the office is to be honoured, though the particular command is to be disobeyed." The confession then states the purpose of the magistrate's office, and here the order matters again: "for his own glory, and the public good." The glory of God comes first. The magistrate exists, first and foremost, to honour the God who appointed him. Every law he enacts, every judgment he renders, every policy he implements either reflects the justice of God or obscures it, and he will answer for that reflection or that obscuration on the day of judgment. But the public good comes second, and it is not in tension with the first end but in harmony with it. A magistrate who serves the glory of God will, by that very service, promote the good of the people under his care. And a magistrate who neglects the glory of God will, sooner or later, find that he has undermined the public good as well. The two ends cannot be separated, and the attempt to separate them, whether by pursuing public utility without reference to divine glory or by speaking of divine glory without practical care for the welfare of the people, is the characteristic error of every secular state and every theocratic tyranny. The final clause addresses the means by which the magistrate fulfills his calling. God has "armed them with the power of the sword, for the defense and encouragement of them that are good, and for the punishment of evildoers." The phrase "power of the sword" is the traditional Latin jus gladii, the right of the sword, the authority to take life in the administration of justice. The Confession is careful to present this power not as a grim necessity to be apologised for but as a positive good. The sword has two edges, and the Confession names them both: defense and encouragement on one side, punishment on the other. The magistrate is both a punisher and a protector. He does not only restrain evil; he also promotes good. The government that God has ordained is not a necessary evil — it is a gift. It is, as Calvin taught, the primary instrument by which God preserves human society from dissolving into chaos, the dike that holds back the flood of human wickedness long enough for the gospel to be preached and the church to be gathered. To despise the magistrate's office is not only to despise the magistrate; it is to despise the God who gave him his office and his sword.

Theological Depth

Calvin, in the fourth book of his Institutes, devotes an entire chapter to civil government, and he opens it with a warning that bears repeating in every generation. There are some, he writes, who imagine that the kingdom of Christ and the civil order are opposed to one another, that Christian liberty means freedom from every human authority, and that the regenerate have no need of the sword. Calvin's response is sharp. Such people, he says, "dream of a perfection which can never be found in a community of men." Civil government is not a concession to the weakness of the unregenerate only; it is a provision of divine wisdom for all people in all ages, "a ordinance of God, which we must cherish as a most sacred gift." The word "sacred" is deliberate and striking. The magistrate's office, far from being a secular residue that the church must tolerate, is a holy calling, an institution that God has sanctified for the preservation of human life and the maintenance of order in a world that sin would otherwise destroy. Calvin's emphasis falls where the Confession's emphasis falls: the magistrate is a diakonos, a servant of God, and his work is not merely useful but religious. He serves God in his judging, in his lawmaking, in his policing, in his punishing, every bit as much as the pastor serves God in his preaching. Watson, in his Body of Divinity, takes up the same theme and presses it into the realm of conscience. Why must the Christian submit to the magistrate, even to a magistrate who is unworthy of the office he holds? Watson's answer is that the magistrate bears God's image in the sphere of authority. "The magistrate," he writes, "is God's vicegerent on earth, and to resist him is to resist God in him." The word "vicegerent" is an old one, but it captures the truth exactly. The magistrate is not God, but he stands in God's place for a particular purpose and within a particular sphere, and the reverence that is owed to the office is not diminished by the unworthiness of the man who fills it. Watson draws, as so many of the Puritans did, on the example of David's treatment of Saul. Saul was a wicked king, an unworthy king, a king whom God Himself had rejected. And yet David, when he had the opportunity to kill Saul in the cave at En-gedi, refused to lift his hand against the Lord's anointed. "The LORD forbid that I should do this thing unto my master, the LORD's anointed, to stretch forth mine hand against him, seeing he is the anointed of the LORD" (1 Samuel 24:6). The office was holy, even when the officer was profane. David honoured the crown on the head of a man who had forfeited the right to wear it. A.A. Hodge, in his commentary on the Confession, clarifies the philosophical basis of the doctrine. The institution of civil government, Hodge argues, is grounded not in a particular historical covenant or a specific divine command but in human nature itself. Man is a social creature, made to live in community, and community requires order. Man is also a moral creature, capable of knowing right and wrong but incapable, in his fallen state, of consistently doing the right and avoiding the wrong without the restraint of law. Civil government is therefore a creation ordinance, rooted in the same divine wisdom that established marriage and the Sabbath and the distinction between male and female. It is not, as the social-contract theorists of the Enlightenment would later claim, a mere convention that human beings have invented for their convenience and can reinvent at their pleasure. It is an institution of God, and it carries the authority of God, even when the particular form it takes — monarchy, aristocracy, democracy — is a matter of human prudence. Hodge's careful distinction between the divine origin of government and the human form of government is a pivotal contribution of the Reformed tradition to political thought. It allows the Christian to affirm the legitimacy of a wide variety of political arrangements without falling into the error of believing that any particular arrangement is uniquely ordained, and it allows the Christian to honour the authority of the state while reserving the right to criticise the state's particular policies and to work for their reform. Turretin, in his Institutes of Elenctic Theology, addresses whether civil government belongs to the moral law or to the positive law, and his answer carries far-reaching consequences. If civil government were merely a positive ordinance, given to Israel under the Mosaic administration and binding on no one else, then the state would have no claim on the conscience of the Christian except insofar as the Christian voluntarily submitted to it. But Turretin argues that civil government is rooted in the moral law, specifically in the fifth commandment, which requires honour to all lawful superiors, and in the sixth commandment, which requires the preservation of human life. Because it is grounded in the moral law, the institution of civil government is perpetual and universal. It is binding on all men in all nations at all times, and the duty of submission to lawful authority is not a matter of cultural preference or political calculation but of divine command. At the same time, Turretin insists on the distinction between the office and the officer, between the institution and the particular office-holder. The office is always sacred; the officer may be wicked. The institution is always legitimate; the particular laws may be unjust. The Christian honours the first while he may, in appropriate circumstances, resist the second. And the form that resistance takes — whether passive disobedience to a command that contradicts God's law, or active advocacy for reform through lawful channels — is itself a matter of prudence, not a question of fundamental principle. One further theological connection deserves mention. The Confession's statement that the magistrate exists "for his own glory, and the public good" echoes the structure of the moral law, which the Reformed tradition has always divided into two tables: duties to God and duties to neighbour. The magistrate who neglects the first table fails in the fundamental purpose of his office; the magistrate who neglects the second dishonours the God who commanded him to serve the public good.

Puritan Application

First, let your obedience to the magistrate be a matter of conscience, not merely of convenience. The apostle Paul commands submission not because the magistrate is always right but because the magistrate's authority comes from God, and the Christian conscience is bound by that divine origin even when the particular command is burdensome or the particular magistrate is unworthy. The Christian who obeys the laws of the land only when he agrees with them, who pays his taxes only when he approves of how the money is spent, who honours the magistrate only when the magistrate belongs to his political party, has not yet grasped what it means to submit "for the Lord's sake." The obedience that Peter and Paul command is not a prudential calculation — if I obey, the government will leave me alone — but a theological act, an expression of faith in the God who ordains the powers that be. Watson drew the distinction between a prudential submission and a conscientious one with sharp clarity. The man who submits only because he fears the consequences of rebellion, he said, is no better than a prisoner who obeys his jailer. The man who submits because he sees the hand of God in the institution of authority is a free man, acting not under compulsion but under the sweet constraint of reverence for the God who appointed the magistrate. This does not mean that every law must be obeyed without question — the Confession's later sections will address the limits of obedience — but it does mean that the default posture of the Christian toward lawful authority is one of honour, not suspicion, and of submission, not defiance. Second, distinguish carefully between the office and the officer. One of the most dangerous errors in political life, and one that the Confession's doctrine is designed to prevent, is the confusion of the institution with the individual who holds it. The magistrate's office is holy; the magistrate himself may be wicked. The authority of the office is from God; the man who holds it may be a scoundrel. To honour the office is a duty; to honour the officer, insofar as he faithfully executes his office, is a duty; but to honour the officer when he abuses his office is not. The example of David and Saul, which the Puritans and the reformers returned to again and again, teaches us to maintain this distinction with the utmost care. David honoured Saul as the Lord's anointed, even when Saul was hunting him like a partridge in the mountains. He would not lift his hand against the king, but neither would he pretend that the king's actions were righteous. He submitted to the authority of the office while he fled from the violence of the man, and he left the judgment of the man to the God who had appointed him. This is a difficult balance to maintain, and every generation of Christians has struggled to hold it. The temptation to collapse the office into the officer — and therefore to despise both when the officer fails — is constant. But the Confession calls us to a more careful discernment, an honour that is due to the institution even when the institutionalised have dishonoured themselves. Third, pray for those who hold authority, and pray for them in the language that Paul prescribes. The apostle writes to Timothy: "I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men; for kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty" (1 Timothy 2:1–2). The four words that Paul uses for prayer — deēseis (supplications for specific needs), proseuchas (prayers in the general sense of drawing near to God), enteuxeis (intercessions, the bold approach of a subject to a king), eucharistias (thanksgivings) — cover the full range of the believer's communion with God on behalf of the state. We are to supplicate, to pray, to intercede, and to give thanks. And notice: Paul wrote this under Nero. He was commanding the church to give thanks for a government that would soon turn on the church with fire and sword. The command does not depend on the virtue of the ruler; it depends on the reality that God is working through every authority, even the unjust, to accomplish purposes that we cannot see. The Christian who never prays for his political leaders, or who prays only for the leaders he voted for, or who prays with resentment rather than charity, has not yet learned the discipline that Paul enjoins. God commands us to pray for Nero. How much more, then, for the magistrates whom God in His kindness has given us? Fourth, honour the sword as a gift of common grace, not as an embarrassment that the gospel must apologise for. There is a habit of thought, especially in some parts of the modern church, that treats the coercive power of the state as a regrettable necessity at best and a contradiction of Christian love at worst. The magistrate who punishes evildoers, in this view, is doing something that the church would rather not think about. The sword is necessary, perhaps, but it is not noble. The Confession will have none of this. The sword is a gift. The magistrate who bears it is a diakonos — a minister, a servant — of God. The punishment of evildoers is not a concession to the hardness of human hearts; it is an act of divine justice carried out through human hands, and it is good. The parent who disciplines a child, the judge who sentences a criminal, the officer who restrains a violent man — all of them, when they act within their lawful authority, are serving the God who is not mocked and whose justice will not sleep forever. The church should not be embarrassed by the sword but grateful for it, for the sword is what stands between the weak and the strong, the innocent and the oppressor, the peaceful and the violent. When the sword is laid aside — when the magistrate refuses to punish evil — it is not mercy that results but chaos, for the evildoer is emboldened and the righteous are left without defense. Fifth, let the two ends of the magistrate's office — God's glory and the public good — order your own priorities as you engage with public life. The Confession insists that these two ends cannot be separated, and the Christian who tries to separate them will inevitably damage both. If you care only for the public good, without reference to the glory of God, you will build a society that is efficient but godless, prosperous but empty, comfortable but damned. If you care only for the glory of God, without reference to the public good, you will build a church that is pure in doctrine but indifferent to suffering, orthodox in theology but useless to its neighbours. The magistrate who governed according to the first table alone would be a tyrant, imposing worship by force and confusing the civil sword with the keys of the kingdom. The magistrate who governed according to the second table alone would be a secularist, pretending that the God who ordained his office has nothing to say about how he exercises it. The Christian, whether in office or out of it, must hold both ends together: the glory of God as the ultimate aim, the public good as the proximate aim, and both pursued in the fear of the God who will judge the living and the dead.

Prayer

O Lord God, supreme Lord and King of all the world, who dost govern the nations in righteousness and settest up kings and removest them according to Thy sovereign will, we bow before Thee with reverence and fear. Thou hast ordained the civil magistrate to be a minister of Thy justice, a terror to evildoers, and a shield to those who do good. We confess that we have often failed to honour the authorities Thou hast appointed, murmuring when we should have submitted and despising the office for the faults of the officer. Forgive us this sin, and teach us to render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to Thee the things that are Thine, with a conscience that is clear before heaven and a heart that rests in Thy sovereignty over every throne. We pray, as Thou hast commanded, for all who hold authority: for kings and presidents, for judges and legislators, for officers and magistrates of every rank. Grant them wisdom to discern right from wrong, courage to punish evil without partiality, and humility to remember that the authority they exercise is not their own but Thine. Restrain the wicked among them, strengthen the righteous, and turn the hearts of all to seek, however dimly, the ends for which Thou hast established their office: Thy glory and the common good of those they govern. Grant us, we beseech Thee, the grace to live peaceably under the laws of the land, not as those who obey only when obedience is easy, but as those who see Thy hand even in the structures of human authority and who honour the magistrate for Thy sake. And when the laws of men conflict with the law of Christ, give us the wisdom to disobey with humility and the courage to suffer with patience, remembering that the kingdom we belong to is not of this world and that its King, who once stood silent before Pilate, will one day return to judge the nations in righteousness. Until that day, O Lord, be Thou the defender of the defenseless, the judge of the oppressed, and the hope of all who wait for the appearing of Thy Son, in whose name we pray. Amen.