Ordered Obedience: Church, State, and the Lordship of Christ

Politics, for many Christians today, is a prickly word. It evokes discomfort, if not outright fatigue. The cultural temperature is hot, the rhetoric exhausting, and the temptation to either retreat into silence or lash out in partisanship is ever-present. Yet Christians, by virtue of being disciples of Christ and citizens within earthly nations, cannot afford to abdicate their political posture. Not because politics is ultimate, but because it is penultimate. The civil realm matters to God—not salvifically, but as a domain of justice, order, and common grace in which His people are called to walk wisely, speak clearly, and obey Him above all. In a time when government overreach is increasingly justified on therapeutic grounds, and when religious liberties are increasingly relativised under new moral orthodoxies, Christians need a robust and thoughtful doctrine of church and state more than ever.

A growing number of evangelicals, however, are increasingly wary of Christian political involvement—especially when that involvement appears confrontational. The emerging instinct is to prioritise submission, peaceability, and prudence. Of course, these are biblical virtues. Yet they are not the only biblical virtues, and they do not operate in a vacuum. The oft-quoted texts—Romans 13, 1 Peter 2, and 1 Timothy 2—are regularly marshalled to present a threefold ethic: pray for rulers, obey the state, and seek quiet godliness. These imperatives are indeed in Scripture. But the way they are often wielded today reduces their scope and abstracts them from the fuller biblical witness. When treated as stand-alone prooftexts, they foster an anaemic view of the Christian’s public responsibilities. They can produce a political quietism dressed up in biblical language, masking an underlying accommodation to the spirit of the age.

To be fair, some reactions against politicised Christianity are understandable. There are real dangers in collapsing church and state, confusing the gospel with policy, or treating temporal battles as ultimate. Christians have, at times, sounded more like partisan warriors than ambassadors of Christ. We must not sanctify our personal ideologies by baptising them in prooftexts. The civil realm is not the kingdom of God, and Christians must beware of triumphalist visions that treat cultural wins as signs of spiritual faithfulness. Nevertheless, these qualifications should not lead to the opposite error: where Christian witness in the public square becomes so measured, so restrained, and so de-politicised, that it no longer bears any prophetic weight. A Christianity that never offends Caesar is unlikely to be following Christ.

A biblical theology of church and state begins not with accommodation, but with allegiance. Scripture is clear: Christ is Lord of all. While church and state are distinct institutions, they are not unrelated. Both are under God’s sovereign authority and accountable to Him. Romans 13 affirms that civil rulers are servants of God, which is precisely why they can be held to account when they rebel against Him. To grant them unconditional submission is to deny the very moral framework the text assumes. Likewise, 1 Peter 2 calls Christians to honour the emperor, but it also calls them a royal priesthood and holy nation—terms that evoke the church’s distinctive identity as a community under God’s rule, not Caesar’s. The earliest Christians understood this tension. They obeyed the authorities when possible, but disobeyed when commanded to sin. Acts 4–5 is not an exception to the norm, but an illustration of faithful Christian resistance.

This distinction becomes especially important when governments extend their reach into the life of the church. During the recent pandemic, for example, many churches rightly sought to protect their members by following health advice. But others acquiesced too quickly to government mandates that suspended worship or redefined it as a non-essential service. In doing so, they unintentionally granted to Caesar what belongs to Christ—the right to determine when and how the church gathers. The issue was not simply health policy, but ecclesiology. As various Reformed traditions have affirmed, the power of the keys is given to the church, not the state. While prudence and flexibility are necessary in times of crisis, the decision to gather (or not) must be made by the elders of the church in obedience to Scripture—not imposed by fiat.

Recent developments in my State, New South Wales, further illustrate the need for vigilance. The 2024 Conversion Practices Ban Bill, which recently came into effect, potentially criminalises consensual pastoral conversations about sexuality and gender identity^[1]The Conversion Practices Ban Act 2024 (NSW), effective from 4 April 2025, prohibits any practice—whether in-person or online—intended to change or suppress a person’s sexual orientation or … Continue reading. The Abortion Law Reform Amendment (Health Care Access) Bill 2025, which is currently being debated, does not revisit the legality of abortion itself—which is already a grave moral evil—but it further seeks to compel public health institutions—and indirectly, Christian professionals—to facilitate abortion services. If passed, it would allow the Minister of Health to mandate abortion access in every public health district, require conscientious objectors to refer patients, and remove reporting requirements for practitioners. The Bill expands those eligible to perform abortions to include nurses and midwives, multiplying ethical conflicts. It risks creating employment discrimination and coercive pressure, effectively forcing Christian medical professionals to choose between obedience to God and conformity to law.

It is precisely in such moments—when law begins to press into the conscience and practice of the church—that Christians must be clear-eyed. With a federal election looming, these realities are not theoretical. Our engagement in civic life is not an attempt to usher in the kingdom of God through legislation, but it is a means of bearing witness to God’s justice and truth in the public square. When governments assume the authority to redefine good and evil or to dictate the conscience, Christians must speak—not as political revolutionaries, but as those who fear God more than man.

Some may argue that such moments are not worth fighting over. That civil disobedience should be reserved for extraordinary cases—when the state explicitly forbids preaching the gospel or demands we deny Christ. But this reasoning presumes that threats to the church will always arrive with a trumpet blast. Often, they come quietly, wrapped in the language of safety or public interest. The issue is not whether persecution has arrived full-blown, but whether we are training ourselves to respond faithfully when it does. If we constantly delay our resistance, waiting for a crisis that meets some undefined threshold, we will find ourselves unprepared when that crisis comes. Civil disobedience should not be undertaken lightly—but neither should obedience to the state be reflexive or unthinking.

In this light, it is not unchristian to resist unjust laws. It is not unloving to speak clearly about moral evil. It is not unwise to hold civil authorities to account under God’s law. Indeed, it may be the most loving and faithful thing a Christian can do. Indeed, I would merely defer to the imprisoned Chinese pastor, Wang Yi, on this point that “Peaceable disobedience is the way in which we love the world as well as the way in which we avoid becoming part of the world.”^[2]Wang Yi, Faithful Disobedience: Writings on Church and State from a Chinese House Church Movement, eds. Hannah Nation and J. D. Tseng (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2022), 226. The biblical vision is not one of unqualified submission to the state, nor is it one of perpetual rebellion. It is one of ordered obedience, rightly ordered under Christ. When Christians refuse to bow to unjust decrees, they are not undermining the common good; they are preserving it. When the church speaks with clarity on matters of public morality, she is not being political in a worldly sense—she is being faithful.

This does not mean we must wage culture wars. But it does mean we must have the courage to speak when silence is easier, and to stand when bowing would win us applause. We live in a time when Christian witness in the public square is increasingly unwelcome. But that is precisely when it is most needed. Let us be known not merely for our civility, but for our clarity. Not merely for our submission, but for our steadfastness. The world does not need a church that whispers. It needs one that speaks with the prophetic voice of her Lord.