Governments are not merely a response to sin, but are also affected by sin. Governments can become “beastly”; they can function as objects of idolatrous designs. They can – even when they claim to be maintaining “law and order” – commit themselves to injustice, unrighteousness, and oppression…Since we are already citizens of God’s commonwealth, we must find effective ways of living in political conformity to its norms and patterns. Because we know that all political rulers will someday be called to account for the only true Sovereign, we must not give them more than they are due in the present age. And from the perspective of the New Testament, what is “due” them is not blind obedience or uncritical submission — and it certainly is not worship or idolatrous trust.
There is a connection and a continuation between God’s original creation and what we will find in the new heaven and the new earth. So if we want to know something of the future, we need to know something of the original designs of God as found in the opening chapters of Genesis.
All believers should be intrigued and interested in what life will be like in our future state. And the Bible has much to say about it, and not just in the last book of the Bible – Revelation. The Old Testament prophets often spoke about these matters, often speaking in terms of a glorious future that Israel would one day experience. There are numerous such passages, including Isaiah 60.
Yes, Christians can have different understandings of just how these OT texts are to be understood. For example, do they apply only for Israel, or for all God’s people. Do they refer to some millennial state, or to the eternal state? Indeed, just what exactly does the Bible mean when it speaks about heaven and the like?
Twenty years ago Richard Mouw of Fuller Theological Seminary in California released a slim little volume called When the Kings Come Marching In (Eerdmans, 2002). It is based on some lectures he had given a few decades earlier, looking at Isaiah 60.
Before going any further, let me say this: If you like people like Abraham Kuyper and the notions of common grace and the cultural mandate, you will quite like Mouw, since he writes about these matters so very often. If not, well, look away now. But for those still interested, see some of my earlier articles on this:
billmuehlenberg.com/2022/07/19/on-the-cultural-mandate/
billmuehlenberg.com/2022/07/18/jordan-peterson-and-common-grace/
But here I want to offer a few quotes from his 2002 volume. First let me draw upon his introductory chapter. Not only is there a connection between creation and new creation, but there is to be a connection with how we live NOW – in between these two periods. He writes:
Like the Old Testament saints, we Christians await the appearance of God’s city — we too “desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one” (Heb. 11:16). But while we are to be a “waiting” people, we are not to be passive in our lives of anticipation. The biblical visions of the future are given to us so that we may have the kind of hope that issues forth into lives of active disobedience vis-a-vis contemporary culture.
When I refer to “culture” in these pages I am not using the term in any narrow sense. This is not a book, for example, about “refined tastes” in art or music or literature. My focus here is on the broad patterns of social life, including political, economic, technological, artistic, familial, and educational patterns. It is my contention in these meditations that it is extremely significant that when Isaiah looks to the fulfillment of God’s promises, he envisions a community into which technological artifacts, political rulers, and people from many nations are gathered. God intended from the beginning that human beings would “fill the earth” with the processes, patterns and products of cultural formation.
