{"id":884,"date":"2008-11-02T19:57:18","date_gmt":"2008-11-02T23:57:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/godandculture.wordpress.com\/?p=884"},"modified":"2008-11-02T19:57:18","modified_gmt":"2008-11-02T23:57:18","slug":"the-cross-of-christ-and-political-authority","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/the-cross-of-christ-and-political-authority","title":{"rendered":"The Cross of Christ and Political Authority"},"content":{"rendered":"

In view of the election this coming Tuesday, I spoke this morning at Calvary Baptist Church\u00a0on the above subject from Colossians 1:15-20, highlighting three major points from the text:<\/p>\n

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  1. Jesus Christ is the Creator of all political authority (Colossians 1:16).<\/strong> This includes both visible and invisible political authority; that is, political authority has a physical dimension<\/em> that can be seen as well as a spiritual dimension<\/em> that cannot be seen. The physical dimension includes the throne of Satan (Isaiah 14:12), the dominion of Adam (Genesis 1:26), succeeded by Noah (Genesis 9), Abraham (Genesis 12), Isaac, Jacob,\u00a0 Moses, Joshua, and the Judges, and the throne of David (Isaiah 9:6,7). At the center of all of history is a battle over who will occupy the throne, who will rule. The spiritual dimension also includes a throne (Revelation 4) from which God dictates the affairs of men. The thrones of the physical dimension and the throne of God are in conflict because of the rebellion of Satan, some angels, and man against God. In spite of the rebellion, Jesus Christ is the head of these rogue thrones (Colossians 2:10). These thrones do not share God’s authority, they mediate God’s authority and they are slaves to God (Romans 13:1-7).<\/li>\n
  2. Jesus Christ is reconciling rogue poltical authority to Himself (Colossians 1:20).<\/strong> He is accomplishing this “through the blood of his cross” by which he has ransomed for himself a people for his own possession who are “a kingdom of priests” who will rule with him (Revelation 5:9). He has ransomed people “out of every tribe and language and people and nation,” making them a new nation with alligiance to Him. Our first allegiance is to Jesus Christ and His Kingdom, not to the United States of America. We have been called out of America to be a people for God’s own possession. Rogue political authority – the visible dominion of humanity –\u00a0will one day be reconciled to Jesus Christ’s throne – the invisible dominion of God, made possible by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.<\/li>\n
  3. Jesus Christ has disarmed rogue political authority and triumphed over it (Colossians 2:15).<\/strong> He did this both by the Cross and by his resurrection from the dead. And we have been raised with him, and as participants in his resurrection Paul enjoins us to focus on the invisible Kingdom of God rather than the visible rogue authorities presently ruling through the political authority granted to them by Jesus Christ (Colossians 3:1-4). The affections of a spiritually resurrected believer are not wasted on allegiance to visible political authority, but focused on the invisible authority of God as He rules the affairs of men from his throne in heaven (Revelation 4).<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    What all of this means as we vote on Tuesday is that God ultimately rules and that our allegiance is to Him and His Kingdom, not to the rogue political authorities, regardless of who is elected president of the United States; that the Cross of Christ, His suffering, death, and resurrection are as much about restoring order to the political realm as they were about individual salvation.<\/p>\n

    For the context of the message, listen to it in its entirety here: http:\/\/www.cbcwaterford.com\/audio\/s11-02-08am.mp3<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    In view of the election this coming Tuesday, I spoke this morning at Calvary Baptist Church\u00a0on the above subject from Colossians 1:15-20, highlighting three major points from the text: Jesus Christ is the Creator of all political authority (Colossians 1:16). … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=884"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}