{"id":21837,"date":"2020-07-25T13:27:34","date_gmt":"2020-07-25T18:27:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/?p=21837"},"modified":"2020-07-25T13:48:24","modified_gmt":"2020-07-25T18:48:24","slug":"a-time-for-civil-disobedience-a-response-to-grace-community-churchs-elders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/?p=21837","title":{"rendered":"A Time for Civil Disobedience? A Response to Grace Community Church\u2019s Elders"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Before your church follows John MacArthur&rsquo;s Grace Community Church and begins to gather in defiance of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/california\/story\/2020-07-13\/newsom-california-county-rollback-reopening-coronavirus\">governmental orders<\/a> this Sunday, hold on! Stop and think with me for a moment.<\/p>\n<p>In case you missed it, MacArthur provided <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gty.org\/library\/blog\/B200723?fbclid=IwAR3zNNiYjRMFS2orTktjBjN3XEF-2jIMr7Yuv_MTBU04PXhsjkrGX1XgnOs\">a wonderful statement<\/a> affirming: Christ&rsquo;s lordship over governments; our duty to disobey governments when governments forbid worship; and the government&rsquo;s lack of jurisdiction over a church&rsquo;s doctrine, practice, and polity. Plus, pastors do well to learn from MacArthur&rsquo;s example of courage. In years and decades to come, we may have many opportunities to defy governmental incursions.<\/p>\n<p>Plus, I respect the decision of the Grace Community elders to &ldquo;respectfully inform [their] civic leaders that they have exceeded their legitimate jurisdiction&rdquo; and that &ldquo;faithfulness to Christ prohibits [them] from observing the restrictions they want to impose on [their] corporate worship services.&rdquo; That might be the right decision. I believe it&rsquo;s a judgment call, but if they feel bound of conscience to gather their church, then they should gather (see Rom. 14:14, 23).<\/p>\n<p>Yet I&rsquo;d also like to add, civil disobedience may not be the only legitimate or moral course of action at this moment.<\/p>\n<p>Four additional things are worth mentioning in case you did read<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Before your church follows John MacArthur\u2019s Grace Community Church and begins to gather in defiance of governmental orders this Sunday, I&#8217;d like to suggest that civil disobedience may not be the only legitimate or moral course of action at this moment.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[793],"tags":[2744,1856,1956,312,327],"class_list":["post-21837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-9marks","tag-church-and-state","tag-coronavirus","tag-covid-19","tag-leadership","tag-life-together","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21837"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21837\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21839,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21837\/revisions\/21839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}