TEXAS GOSPEL VOLUNTEER

You may feel tension when you see the state of the world. Governments pass unjust laws. Authorities act corruptly. Culture drifts further from the values of scripture. And in that tension, a question rises: is it right, even righteous, for Christians to resist, to protest, to engage in acts of civil disobedience?

Paul wrote to the Romans about this. He spoke of the Christian’s relationship to governing authority in all of the New Testament. Paul writes with clarity: be in subjection to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God. He goes further. Whoever resists the authorities, he says, resists what God himself has appointed. That is a statement with weight. It does not simply ask us to tolerate government; it grounds governmental authority in the ordering of God himself.

Paul returns to this theme in his letter to Titus, instructing believers to be subject to rulers and authorities, to obey, to be ready for every good work, to speak evil of no one, to be peaceable and gentle, showing humility to all people. Notice the posture Paul is describing. It is not passive indifference to injustice. It is an active, costly peaceableness. It is the disposition of someone who remembers what they once were, foolish, disobedient, deceived, driven by various lusts, and who now lives differently because of grace. We were once like those whose conduct we might be tempted to condemn. That memory ought to soften us, even as it emboldens us.

Now, this does not mean that Christians are called to silence. The call to avoid rebellion is not a call to abandon conviction. We may vote. We may stand publicly for what is right. We may uphold morality, speak the truth, and above all, carry the gospel into every corner of society. These are legitimate, honourable means of engaging the world and its systems. What we are not called to be is rebels. We are not called to take up the spirit of the age, which shouts and protests and tears down, and wear it as though it were a Christian garment. It is not. We are a force for peace in a world convulsed by conflict.

The deeper question underneath all of this is one of testimony. What does the watching world see when it looks at the followers of Christ? Do they see people who have been transformed by a grace that makes them peaceable, humble, and gentle, even under pressure? Or do they see people who have simply adopted the tactics of whatever political movement they most favour, dressed in slightly different colours? The apostle’s vision is far more subversive than any protest: a community of people so changed by the gospel that they stand as visible, living evidence that another way of being human is possible.

Let your gentle spirit be known to all people. The Lord is near.

Philippians 4:5