(upbeat music) - Happy Friday everyone. If you've listened to the podcast for a while, you know we don't delve into social and legal and political issues on the podcast very often for a variety of reasons that we've explained over the years and that means attempts by APJ listeners to get us into that conversation and whether or not the church should legislate sin must get pretty creative and they do get creative, even resorting to hypotheticals as in the case of today's question, the most recent creative attempt and it comes to us from an anonymous man, a regular listener who writes this, "Pastor John, hello.

"I often wrestle with the question "over what role our government should play "in outlawing sin. "Specifically, I would like to ask you "a hypothetical question here. "If you were an influential pastor theologian "back in 1913 America, "would you have supported Christian temperance organizations "and lent your voice to prohibition?" Pastor John, what would you say?

- I will try to answer this question honestly but I confess at the very beginning that this question leads into complex issues of church-state relations where I do not have as many answers as I would like to have. But I will take you as far as I can and then you can go further.

The question whether I would have supported prohibition in 1913 might mean, would you have supported it with all the cultural assumptions I may have shared as a child of my times in that day and without any of the hindsight that I now have, it might mean that, or the question might mean, given everything I know now, would I have supported prohibition if I could get in a time machine and go back?

Now, the answer to the first question is, I don't know. I mean, nobody knows. You don't know who you are. What would you be like? It would have been relatively easy to see that a world without drunkenness would be a vastly better world than the one we live in or the one they lived in in 1913.

And I can imagine myself being persuaded that the benefits of sobriety in families and workplaces would justify taking away some legitimate pleasures that both the Bible and culture would ordinarily allow. This is the sort of limitation on people's pleasures and freedoms that we have embraced. With regard to smoking, for example, when I was a boy, it would have been absolutely unthinkable to tell a person that he could not smoke in an airplane or in the office where they work or in a restaurant.

Unthinkable. Rebellion everywhere. Mandates, mandates. But little by little, society as a whole has become so persuaded that smoking is dangerous to our health and so unpleasant to most people that we are willing for governments, goodnight, and institutions to mandate the prohibition of smoking in most workplaces and restaurants and theaters, transportation.

Now, I like these limitations. Yeah, me too. I like them so much, it's easy for me to imagine supporting something like prohibition for similar reasons. So I don't know what I would have done in 1913, but if the question means, given everything I know now, would I have supported prohibition if a time machine could take me back?

And the answer is no, I wouldn't. First, because the Bible does not require teetotalism. It prohibits drunkenness. It warns about the dangers of alcohol. In the end, it bites like a serpent and stings like an adder. Your eyes will see strange things and your heart utter perverse things. You will be like one who lies down in the midst of the sea, like one who lies on the top of a mast.

That's a great picture. Proverbs 23, 32. But there's no prohibition in the Bible. I think a very strong case can be made for total abstinence in our world as a matter of wisdom for oneself, but not as a requirement for others, except maybe in some institutional, limited institutional expectations.

This is mainly a matter of conscience. But second reason I would not get in my time machine and go back and vote for prohibition is that it didn't work. It had unintended consequences that may have been as destructive as the previous abuse of alcohol itself. And this is because unlike the limitations on smoking in our day, the long-term societal support was simply not there.

It seemed like it was there because good night, it takes a lot of people to get a amendment to the constitution passed in 1919. But by 1933, the adequate support had disintegrated and it was reversed. Now, here's where the issues are raised like the one our friend asked in his question, what role should our government play in outlawing sin?

That's part of his question. That's where it's all leading, which gets us into the weeds here. I think a more precise way to ask the question is how does the state decide what actions should be outlawed which Christians regard as sin? And you'll see in a minute why I think that's a better question.

So here are my guidelines. I got, I don't know what I got here. Four, I think four guidelines for wrestling with the question about the relationship between the revealed will of Christ in scripture and the lawmaking power of the state enforceable with the sword. Number one, the church today, the people of Christ on this side of the cross, unlike Israel in the old Testament are not a geopolitical entity.

The church is not a nation state. Therefore the old Testament legal stipulations with their punishments like capital punishment for idolatry or cursing one's parents are not simply brought over and implemented in the church. The church excommunicates unrepentant idolaters. It doesn't execute them. Second, this does not mean that those sins are less grievous or less worthy of capital punishment.

It means that the church hands over that judgment to Christ at his coming. There will be a perfect reckoning from the judge of the universe. Christ will settle all accounts. That ultimate reckoning is not the job of church leaders. Third, Christian faith and all the heart obedience of faith, which flows from it, cannot be coerced by the sword that is by the state.

The entire history of Christendom by force from Constantine to the Puritans was misguided. Any arrangement of church state relations that sanctions state penalties to promote true heart faith and the heart obedience of faith will eventually corrupt the church. Fourth and finally, Jesus said in John 18, 36, "My kingdom is not of this world.

If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting that I might not be delivered over to the Jews, but my kingdom is not of this world." Now, the inference I draw from that statement and other aspects of the New Testament is that Christ in this age does not sanction the use of the sword to punish those who disobey him.

Or to say it another way, Christ does not sanction the use of the sword to enforce disobedience to him. This means that the state to whom God has given the sword, according to Romans 13, should not seek to compel obedience to Christ. Now listen carefully, because I'm gonna make some distinctions here that are fine.

I'll leave a lot of questions unanswered, but I think these distinctions really help. Obeying a law that Christ would approve is not the same as obeying Christ. And disobeying a law that Christ would approve is not the same as disobeying Christ. A person who doesn't even believe that Christ existed can obey a law that Christ approves.

Therefore, punishment for disobeying a law that Christ approves is not the same as punishment for disobeying Christ. I don't think the state should ever punish a person for disobeying Christ. I think that is the prerogative of church discipline. And I think the most severe form of church discipline is excommunication, not death.

There is a difference between saying that Christ wills that a person be punished by the state for breaking a law Christ approves and saying that Christ wills that a person be punished by the state for disobeying him. The former is right, the latter is wrong. Christ does will that a person be punished by the state for breaking a law that he approves.

But Christ does not will that a person be punished by the state for disobeying Christ. All of which implies that Christians should consult Christ in his word when thinking through what sins should be prohibited by law. Because the use of the sword to enforce Christ-approved laws is not the same as using the sword to enforce obedience to Christ.

- That is complex. - They'll have to hit replay. - Amen, rewind and replay. Even better, read the full transcript of the episode. I guess this is as good an opportunity as any to remind everyone out there that as you listen to this episode, this podcast is transcribed in its entirety and published at our online home at askpastorjohn.com.

Go there and read today's transcript or any transcript. It's all there, askpastorjohn.com. While some Christians are dramatically saved out of a life of scandalous sin and have an amazing testimony of deliverance to share, other Christians, particularly those saved at a young age, don't have such a dramatic conversion story.

Should Christians with less dramatic testimonies be okay with that? That's next time. I'm your host Tony Rehnke, we will see you back here on Monday, have a great weekend. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)