The impending presidential election has been dubbed variously as “the most important election in our lifetime,” “the most critical election in the last hundred years,”  “the most significant election since 1860,” and even “the most important election in the history of the United States.”  Your political views will determine to what degree you view any of those observations as hyperbole, but what is little disputed is the fact that we are facing an important election.  In the light of what most certainly will be a critical year in the political history of this country, believers should take a few moments to reestablish themselves in some scriptural truths respecting the believer and his relationship to human government.

            1.  Believers are citizens of heaven.  Writing to the Philippians, the Apostle Paul censures those “who mind earthly things” (3:19) because a believer’s “conversation [i.e., “citizenship”] is in heaven” (v. 20) not on earth.  Believers certainly live in this world, must get along in this world, and must to some significant degree participate in the natural processes, activities, and institutions that enable people to survive here.  But what Paul condemns is a worldview that focuses on and lays emphasis upon “earthly things.”  While Paul surely has in mind those things which are purely carnal and clearly sinful, any mindset that focuses on this life is one that is contrary to the spirit to which we are called as the redeemed and as citizens of heaven.  The believer’s scriptural objective is not first and foremost to save the planet, to preserve the American way of life, or to protect himself from injustice or persecution.  We should not seek martyrdom or ignore the freedoms and other legal structures that have been our privileged heritage.  But the believer is, first of all, a citizen of heaven and, as such, not primarily a “political animal.”  We are not to look to human government to take care of us.  Our mindset is to be that of aliens living in a hostile environment but called upon to act as ambassadors of heaven, proclaiming the gospel and living in accord with the Word of God.

            2.  Believers are to obey human government.  Writing to the believers in Rome (who, by the way, endured a very oppressive government), Paul declared that “the powers that be are ordained [“appointed,” “established”] by God.  Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake” (13:1, 5).  Space does not permit us to delve into this passage except to extract two scriptural principles:  (1) God establishes all human governments good and evil (including those that are popularly elected), and (2) believers are to obey them unless required to do something immoral, illegal, unscriptural, or otherwise sinful.  All that good citizenship requires, a believer should perform (except as listed above).  But the purpose of so doing is not primarily, as some imagine, to make certain that we have a righteous or even a “good” government, but because they are “the minister of God to thee for good” (v. 4).  Therefore, believers are to submit “for conscience sake” (v. 5). 

            Though the Bible has more to say about such things, it, nevertheless, has relatively little to say about a subject that affects every area of our lives and about which many people obsess.  The truth is that believers are not to be focused on this world.  Paul instructed the Colossians to “set” their “affections [“minds”] on things above, not on things on the earth” (3:2).

            However pleased or fearful we may tend to be following the upcoming election, the believer is called upon to serve the Lord, to live as a citizen of heaven, to proclaim the gospel to lost and dying souls, and to edify fellow saints.  May we be good citizens of the United States, but may we remember that our hope, our help, and our home are not here but in heaven.