TO SERVE AND PROTECT

 

(Taken from The Kingdom – Every Square Inch a new book by Neil Cullan McKinlay & D. Rudi Schwartz)

To Serve and Protect

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The State has no children of its own. As strange as it may seem, the State can operate with people from the Family and the Church to function as an entity in the nation. It’s covenantal. It goes all the way back to Adam in the garden of Eden. However, before we go there, let us remind ourselves of the three symbols of the three main pillars of the nation: Family has the rod, Church has the keys, and the State has the sword. The rod for disciplining, the keys for discipling, and the sword for delivering justice. The Family produces and instructs the children, the Church baptises and equips the children and the State protects the children. Each in its own sphere of operation. So, the Family brings the child up in the training and admonition of the Lord (Deut. 6:7-9; Eph. 6:4). The Church baptises and instucts the children in the things of God (Acts 2:38-39). And the State provides and maintains a safe environment for the Family and the Church. (Rom. 13:1-4, see also WCF 23:1 for details). So, in terms of God’s covenant of grace, the Family is to worship and to serve the King, the Church is to affix the sign and seal upon the Family through baptism, showing that that particular family is set apart to serve the King. And the State, again, is to provide a safe environment for all of this to happen – in the service of the King.

Of course, we are not so naïve as to not know that this is not always the case presently in nations. But be that as it may, the Lord gives us many reasons for optimism. Notice the word sword in the following covenant promise of God, “He will judge between many peoples and will settle disputes for strong nations far and wide. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore” (Micah 4:3 NIV). Swords transformed into ploughshares and spears into pruning implements all sounds like we’re back to Adam in Eden. Part of the sword aspect for the State is that “they may lawfully, now under the New Testament, wage war, upon just and necessary occasion.”

“And Yahweh God took the man   and set him in the garden of Eden to cultivate it and to keep it” (Gen. 2:15 LEB). The word “cultivate” as used here by the LEB lends itself to the whole pre-fall covenant of works with Adam as mankind’s representative head. With Eve he was commissioned by God to “be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it” (Gen. 1:28). He was to expand the garden, yes, God’s Kingdom, throughout the earth. Other versions of the Bible translate the Hebrew word עָבַד as dress KJV, tend NKJV, care for NET, work it HCSB, ESV, NIV. The idea, then, was for Adam serve God by cultivating His garden. The other word is שָׁמַר, which means to keep, to attend to, to hedge about, guard, to protect. “To serve and protect”, and variations of it, is the motto of many police forces in Western nations. This essentially is the motto for what Adam was to do in the garden. It’s ancient history that he didn’t do a very good job of this. He brought only thorns and thistles and he failed to protect his wife from an unwanted intruder. So much for “to serve and protect”! To protect the freedom of its citizens against the unlawful invasion of the colonial forces, those South African farmers who took on the mighty British Empire during the Boer War(s) (The First Freedom War 1880-81, The Second Freedom War 1899-1902), and like the nations mentioned in Joel, the opposite of God’s covenant promise for the future became the order of the day outside of the garden for mankind and the soon-to-be developing nations, “Beat your plowshares into swords and your pruning hooks into spears” (Joel 3:10). Thus, Adam was to serve and protect the God’s Kingdom on earth, i.e., the expanding garden.

God replaced Adam with new police “to serve and protect” the garden of His Kingdom, ‘garden-ians’/guardians that would be obedient to God, “therefore the Lord God sent him out of the garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken. So He drove out the man; and He placed cherubim at the east of the garden of Eden, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life” (Gen. 3:23-24). To be sure, the cherubs were not exactly in the gardening business. But (and the following pun is bad timing but too hard to resist!), not to put too fine a point on it!, notice the object that would become the symbol of the State: The sword.

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The State is that which serves and protects the nation. From borders to law-courts, the State is the guardian of Christ’s Kingdom in any nation. That is why Family and Church are to be obedient to God’s minister: “For he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer … Pay to all what is owed to them: taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed” (Rom. 13:7 ESV).

So we see then where the State fits into God’s Cultural Mandate. It is supposed to be about the business of ensuring a safe, clean, yes, a “cultivated” environment in which the nation can raise its families in peace, safety, security; where the Church can go about its business unrestricted in obedience to the Great Commission. This works best when the Thomistic sacred / secular, nature / grace, upper-story / lower-story, or whatever other dualisms have been allowed to enter into Western thought, have been put to the “flaming sword which turned every way”: “For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart” (Heb. 4:12).

Family, Church, and State make up the nation. Each of these three spheres comprises of many satellite spheres all whirring around its nucleus. There ought to be no interference or impediment to any sphere going about its lawful business. The State has been ordained by God to ensure this. Thus, its sword of justice and equity.

Teach the nations to obey the King, for “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people He has chosen as His own inheritance” (Psa. 33:12), and with or without His Church obediently engaging in the Great Commission due to Two Kingdom Theology or other setbacks,  progressively “all nations shall come and worship before You, for Your judgments have been manifested” (Rev. 15:4b).