IN a Christian government God is King, Judge, and Lawgiver, and the individual man or woman is the subject who is governed. There is a government of God on earth wherever there is an individual who has entered into governmental relations with God. This can be done only by faith, for “the carnal mind is enmity against God,” and only faith in God can eliminate the carnal or natural propensities from the soul.
It is in accordance with God’s plan of redemption that the government of God should exist in this form among men. It is the only possible form in which it can exist under the conditions which have ensued since the fall. Every other “government of God,” therefore, is not in the purpose of God, and is not God’s government. It is as useless for men to try to set up a government of God on the earth as it would be for them to undertake any other form of opposition to God. The plan of redemption can be carried out only as it is now being carried out through the operation of God’s grace upon the individual heart, bringing it into subjection to the will of God. And the grace of God must operate through faith.
In the government of God, God’s law is the rule of conduct. This is a perfect rule—the only one in existence—being dictated by Omniscience. It would seem that all people who have the Bible should be aware of this; [308] yet almost the first step that is taken by certain professors of Christianity in their repeated attempts to set up God’s government here, is to enact laws. There is no room for legislation in the matter. God’s own law covers every possible phase of activity under His government.
What all men ought to do, and the only thing that any man or class of men properly can do, is to fall in with the plan and providence of God, which is working to gather out of all nations and peoples of earth subjects for the kingdom of God, by establishing a government of God in each heat that will yield to the gospel invitation.
When this work shall be finished, as ere long it will, the government of God will be set up on the “new earth,” in visible glory.
TRUE reform effort aims to change the man himself, and not merely his circumstances; and this is why human laws possess no reforming power.