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Part 2: Principles 7–13
7. Declare the standards by which the nations will be judged.
The last several points must be coupled with this point because, amidst charity, we must draw lines, too. I borrow the language here from a 1967 article by Carl F. H. Henry. He said the church’s job is “to declare the criteria by which nations will ultimately be judged, and the divine standards to which man and society must conform if civilization is to endure.”
Part of fearing God is knowing that God will judge all nations—“the kings of the earth and the great ones and the generals and the rich and the powerful, and everyone, slave and free” (Rev. 6:15). Your job, pastor, is to help both your members and any visitors know what the biblical criteria of judgment will be. You do this to warn and instruct your church for the purposes of their political engagement. You also do it to lovingly warn the outsider.
To do this well you need a good biblical theology and a good biblical theology of government. You should be able to answer questions like:
What has God authorized
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