With the 2024 election season in full swing, where are we to turn for answers as the presidential candidates exchange barbs and make competing claims? French Reformer Pierre Viret gives the right answer: “the law of God alone is the true standard by which all good and just government must be ruled and conformed.” Simply put: man’s law brings chaos, when it comes to the civil realm, while God’s law brings order and beauty. 

In this podcast, Scott Brown and Jason Dohm unpack the wisdom of Viret, who had to learn to live with flexibility under multiple different governments during his public ministry. Writing in the 16th century, he gave valuable insights that were recently compiled into the book, When to Disobey: Case Studies in Tyranny, Insurrection, & Obedience to God. Viret’s contention is this: Whether believers face suffering or enjoy blessing, they always have a way forward because they can obey God as they engage the civil sphere. Be they under a king, aristocracy, or representative government, Christians should pull whatever levers they can to advance God’s law and leave the results to Him. 

Click here to purchase Viret’s insightful book. 

Welcome to the Church and Family Life podcast. As you know, the debates are rolling, the candidates are positioning and repositioning, and we're here to talk about civil government and how we ought to relate to it. And we're going to focus on Pierre Viret, who had a lot of really good things to say about it. Hope you enjoy the discussion. Jason tis the season for political debate, isn't it?

Should we be glad or not glad? I'm not sure. Well, I haven't been all that glad about all that I've seen. The debates have kind of been insult hurling pretty much, not so much the debates that we kind of would be, we'd appreciate. I think we need fewer people on the stage.

Maybe we'll get more substance. That might help. So we want to talk about governments, types of governments. We want to talk about, the ways of governing And we want to use Pierre Verre as a jump off point. So this is not new.

Back in the COVID days, You brought forward Pierre Verre's work entitled it, When to Disobey. And I think we did something like 10 different sessions. I think there's 13 chapters in the book, but we kept going chapter by chapter. What I loved about Verre is he's clearly a theologian. There's some governmental philosophy in there as well, but really he's a practitioner, meaning he functioned personally and pastorally under a number of different types of government and so wrestled through how a Christian and a Christian pastor ought to relate to those different forms of government.

I found that really encouraging because he's really saying that a believer can function under any kind of government. Right, so true. And he defines the different kinds. And in this chapter that we're gonna discuss is chapter one of when to disobey and how should man be governed. Now one comment about this, this entire section exists as the introduction to his two volume set on the Ten Commandments.

Interesting. Yeah, Rebecca Sheets translated. You can get it on Amazon. And so this is what he wrote to introduce the entire corpus of the Ten Commandments, the first table and the second table of the law. And he's talking about how should man be governed.

That's the issue. Right. And of course, it's he's going to say it's by the law of God. I'm just going to read this. In which it is shown that the law of God alone is the true standard by which all good and just government must be ruled and conformed.

And so he brings the law of God as the standard. Right, this is just a couple of pages later. He says this, We can come to no other conclusion than that men can never be more miserable and more poorly governed than when they are governed by their fellow men. That is, by governors who are mortal men as they are, no matter what form of government they may employ. So he's going to get into different forms of government, but he essentially says any form of government is subject to men.

Whatever form of government you have, if it's governed by men as they are, then you're in deep trouble and headed for misery. That really, men actually, governors themselves need to be governed by the Word of God. And this was Samuel Rutherford's foundation for his work, Lex Rex, law is king, that the king wasn't over law, but that law was over king. Kings existed to govern people for their good according to the Word of God. And you have two things, man's law or God's law.

Man's law is chaos. God's law is order and beauty. And people don't like to talk about that so much because God's law is just so constricting and things like that. But we agree with Verre that man is best governed by the law of God. Right.

One of the things that I appreciate about Verre that I think comes through so clearly is his hopes were not governmental hopes. He's directing us to put our hopes in non-governmental things, in higher things. And he's acknowledging that it doesn't mean that we don't relate to the government. We should have a healthy relationship with the government, a biblical relationship with the government, but when you place your hopes in what a government may or may not do, you are set to be tossed to and fro by the waves. Amen.

And he had a life that afforded him to learn the flexibility to live under these different governments. You know, this really interesting what he says near the beginning of this, he talks about that from time immemorial there have been great and very heated debates among wise men about governments and the best and how to govern them. And boy, we see those debates raging today, you know, have this Christian nationalism debate, you know, it would be nice if somebody defined it really, really clearly, but it's hard to find good definitions. But, you know, the sure solution is that we've been given a standard that's called the Word of God. So he talks about these three kinds of governments, And it's interesting because he names these kinds of governments, but we can see that, you know, government structures shifted, you know, over the years.

What he experienced is a little bit different than what we experience, but I think it's helpful at least to see his categories. Right, the first category being monarchy, having a king. I was reading in First Samuel this morning. My Bible reading plan had me in the text where Israel cries out for a king. Samuel's at the end of his life and they ask for a king.

And Samuel's very distraught about it, but God says, they haven't rejected you, they've rejected me, give them a king. And it was better for Israel when God was their king, and when his ways were actually the ways of the nation. The taxes were a lot lower. Yeah, he actually warns about that. Tell them your king is going to treat you this way, your sons and daughters will be doing his work, a tenth of your things will be given over to him, etc.

That's so funny. He's warning them that 10% taxation is on the way. Wouldn't that be nice? Could we go back to the old days or the old kings or something? So he talks about monarchies and then he talks about aristocracy, where you have a community actually that rules.

Yeah, a plurality, really of elites. Yeah, I believe it is the idea there's an elite class that takes a governmental role, so it's not one, a monarchy. Of course, we're Americans, we hate monarchies, but the truth is, if you have a monarch or a king or a queen who loves God, wants to walk with God, in the Old Testament, the kings were supposed to write out the law of God in their own hand so that they would have had this close association with the ways of God. If you have a king who has a love for those things, a monarchy can be great. If you have a king who has no heart for these things, it'd be terrible.

And that really is the same for every form of government. Yeah, he's a little bit of a governmental relativist, you know, the form is what it is, what's behind the form. Who are the people behind the form? A good monarch would create a good state. A bad monarch, bad.

So same thing with all the forms of government that he mentions. The people matter who are running it. Yep, true. And he's acknowledging almost no one in human history gets to pick the form of government. You're born under a form of government unless you live during a time of revolution, and he's not encouraging you to be the leader of the revolution.

He's laying out the three basic forms of government, acknowledging that you're not going to pick which one you want. You are going to be under one of these forms. Isn't that interesting? You know, in this, in the whole Christian nationalism debate, one of the things that I've thought many times is, you know, the debate is interesting, but guess what? You're not in control of your government.

Unless, you know, God, you know, has ordained that you would become a leader in the government, which is so few people. Our role really is just to be people of the Word of God in the midst of that government and to be obedient to him. And we can survive under any kind of government. Right. So he starts with monarchy, one person with supreme power, he proceeds to aristocracy, So a plurality of people, an elite class, that the power is invested in an elite class.

And then the third basic kind is democracy. Although when he defines democracy, what he's really talking about is what we have in America, representative republic, so that people have the opportunity to pick the people who will represent them in power. So it's not pure democracy. It's really representative republic. He talks about all the different kinds of dangers there are, you know, in each type of government and the susceptibility of governors to their counselors.

And he talks about how even a good governor is potentially going to rule badly because he has evil counselors. Right. And he says a good governor will seek out the counsel of others, but he's vulnerable. When he speaks about this third form of government, which is really a representative republic, he talks about the privileges that are associated with that that people under monarchy or an aristocracy don't enjoy. But he says when you enjoy those privileges there are levers that are available to you as a privilege, and you really, Christians really should avail themselves of the privileges that exist.

In other words, Christians shouldn't just sit back and complain. Meanwhile, they don't lift a finger to pull the levers that are actually the privileges that are theirs to engage in. So Verre's encouragement is that Christians would be involved to the extent that they're allowed to be under the government that they find themselves under. You know, let's see, he talks about, like, with what he calls democracy, there's less danger of tyranny when there's a greater multitude in which the sovereign power resides. But then on the other hand, the lack of wisdom of the populace can ruin the whole mess.

So you know, I think this is this probably just takes us back to Samuel's warnings. Governments are troublesome even though they're God-ordained. We've been saying what Ferre is teaching here, that of the three basic forms of government, you have good forms and bad forms depending on whether they have a heart for God or not. He also makes this point, the worst form of government at all is no government, and how human government is actually a gift of God that restrains a lot of evil even in its imperfect forms, and that anarchy or no government at all when everyone just does what they think is right in their own eyes. If you have a harder book of the Bible to read than Judges, find it for me and tell me what it is.

The Book of Judges is characterized by a period of time in Israel where everyone did what was right in his own eyes, there's very little government, and without the constraints of government, that actually is a blessing to people. He says there are so many drawbacks to all types of civil government. Because it's like churches, there are sinners in them. Families are comprised of sinners, churches are comprised of sinners, governments, even the best forms of government are comprised of sinners. Even if they have a heart from God, they still have remaining corruptions.

And so we're stuck with that. He talks about emotions and desires that govern. He says, it's as if the horses hitched to a wagon ran away with both the wagon and the driver together, breaking and smashing all, instead of being governed and conducted by the driver. And of course, the driver, for Vire is the Word of God. I don't remember whether he quotes 1 Timothy 2 in chapter 1 or not, but I know he does quote it repeatedly throughout the book.

Let me read 1 Timothy 2 verses 1 and 2, where Paul writes, Therefore I exhort first of all that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings and all who are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence." So Verre actually wants to arm us with a tender-hearted disposition towards the authorities that God puts over us. Verre was un-American in that way, And American Christians should be un-American in that way too. It's very American to sit back, complain, name call the leaders that we don't like. I've been guilty of it. I've been in the presence of others when they did it, and that's wrong.

We shouldn't be doing that. We actually should be giving thanks and praying for them. That's not an excuse for all the sinfulness of our leaders, but Veré wants us to have a tender heart of disposition and one that is inclined to prayer. You know, Jeremiah the prophet gives this same kind of advice that you're talking about to the captives in Babylon. Right.

There they are, they're under Nebuchadnezzar, they've been dragged out of their country and now they're enslaved in Babylon. And Jeremiah, he says, look, build houses, dwell in the land, get married. But then he says, pray for the peace of your city. In other words, be a blessing to this government. Do things that are good.

And I think it's one way of saying, you know, don't sit around complaining and trying to subvert everything, but actually invest in the things that you know are good. Scott, there are a couple of landmark New Testament texts about government, how Christians should relate to government. One of them is Romans 13. The one I'd actually like to read from now though is 1 Peter 2 because it's a particular point to make. This is 1 Peter 2, 13 through 17.

Peter writes, Therefore submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake, whether to the king as supreme or to governors as to those who are sent by him for the punishment of evildoers and for the praise of those who do good. For this is the will of God, that by doing good you may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men as free, not yet using liberty as a cloak for vice, but as bond-servants of all. Honor all people. Love the brotherhood. Fear God.

Honor the king." And then Peter goes on to talk about the submission of Christian servants to Masters too. And really a key point here is having a place in how we think about relating to governments for suffering well. Talk about things that are un-American. Americans don't want to suffer well. They don't want to hear about it.

They want to hear that if the government is doing something that you think is wrong, you're off the hook, but that's not actually the teaching of Scripture. We do live under a representative republic where we have levers that we can pull. We should pull those. We should go to the courts. We should be active in getting leaders elected who have a heart for the things of God.

But when those people aren't in power, and when the people who are in power are doing things that aren't right, we aren't without constraints. We don't get to do what we want just because we don't like the current government. There needs to be a place for suffering well in our view of these things. Yeah. And the Christian always has a way forward because he himself can be obedient to God in the midst of any kind of situation.

And Verre ends this section by saying something like that. He says, if the law isn't obeyed, we can expect nothing but horrible confusion, destruction, desolation, and utmost ruin of all empires, kingdoms, countries, cities, communities, peoples, nations, and all commonwealths." And he says, we have a lot of examples of that happening. But the Christian always has a way forward in obeying the Lord in the state in which he finds himself, in the station with which he occupies. And the governments will do what the governments will do. We should have as great effect as we can on them, but we are subservient.

But that doesn't mean we're without hope. A couple of months ago, we did a podcast with Bradley Pierce on abortion and the work that he's doing to legalize life, imagine having to legalize life. And he had four planks that he wanted Christians to consider in terms of getting engaged to help legislatively improve things in this category. And I loved it because it picks up on this thing. We live in a place where we have privileges as part of a representative republic that most people in human history would love to have the privileges that we enjoy and his encouragement to us is to pull those levers, is to be involved and to support the people who are legislators, the more local the better, and to help the ones that are good and pray for them all.

Yeah, that was so practical and he really was helping us to understand how to obey God in the midst of a corrupt government and how to move forward with corrupt laws, which we have some in our own nation. Okay, there you have it, Pierre Verre. You either get God's law or you get chaos. And praise the Lord that he's given us away. Yeah, brothers and sisters, we're coming into election season.

We have levers to pull and we should pull them according to the Word of God. We should be involved and we should act like Christians. And at some point that may mean suffering well. That's important for our testimony. People are watching how Christians relate to their government.

And if we have this tender-hearted disposition that we find in the New Testament, and we suffer well when we have to and when we engage in a way that's consistent with the Word of God will be a blessing where we live. Yeah. And hey, as the elections get closer, We'll probably do a podcast on qualifications for civil leaders, which the Bible speaks about. So look forward to that. The Bible speaks to it.

It sure does. Amen. Hey, thank you for joining us on the Church and Family Life podcast. I hope you can be with us next time. Dot com.