God and Country

1)The nature of God’s blessing is primarily covenantal.
Throughout Scripture God makes a covenant (an agreement) with a people. The stipulations of the covenant include blessings or curses. What is essential to understand for our sakes is that the covenant, and its promise of blessings and curses, are for the people of the covenant—that is, God’s people.

If we are faithful we will experience God’s blessings (which in the New Testament are found in the beatitudes (Matt 5:3-12; Luke 6:20-23); and if we are not faithful we will experience God curses (Luke 6:24-26).

2)People of the covenant are independent of the nations
The people of God today—those who are in covenant with God—are not and cannot be identified with any nation. The people of God are in many nations. But no one nation (e.g., America) is to be identified with the covenant people.

The covenant people of God are those who follow Christ. Christ followers live in many nations of the world and no one nation is exclusively Christian. (That means that the US has never been and never will be a “Christian nation”)

Now, it is true that in the time before Jesus the covenant people were restricted to the nation of Israel. But such is not true today.

This means that the promise of blessings or the threat of curses do not and cannot apply to any nation. To say, then, that America will be blessed if we vote on way and cursed if we vote another is simply not true!

3)What about all those nations that elect corrupt leaders?
Consider this: There are many countries in the world that have elected people far worse than our present candidates. Why don’t we go about warning those countries that they are in danger of God’s judgment?

To this someone might reply: that America is in danger because we are/were a Christian nation and that because we have fallen God is bringing/will bring judgment on America. Sorry this cannot be justified from a biblical perspective. It is simply not true.

4)The nations will face judgment
It is true that the nations of the world will face judgment in the end. They are not judged, however, because they made unchristian laws or elected the wrong person as president.

The judgment of the nations is founded upon one thing: how they have treated the people of God (cf Matt 25:31-46).

If you want the nation you live in to be blessed, then be faithful
To claim then that this or any election is vital for our nation is seriously in error. What is vital is that the people of God are faithful to His mission!: that we, the Church, are Jesus to the world: that we are shining the light of Christ to the nations.

If we want the nation that we live in to be blessed, then be faithful. After all, politics always flows downstream from culture! Want to affect politics, then change the culture!
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But note: we cannot change the culture through legislation. We change the culture one heart at a time; and this begins with ourselves!