Written by Ray E. Heiple Jr. |
Tuesday, October 15, 2024
Wherever there is a choice between candidates, where one of those candidates, if elected, will clearly do more to uphold the moral law of God to protect the good and punish evil, you have a moral obligation before God to vote for that candidate. That is how you exercise your God-given authoritative position as voter, to protect the good and punish the evil. It does not matter which candidate you like more, which one looks or sounds more like you, which one will make your life easier in some way, which one acts nicer or friendlier, which one the newscasters like more, or anything else.

…that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence (1 Tim. 2:2b).
Christians are required to keep the moral law. Jesus said repeatedly “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15, 23; 15:10). The moral law declares the difference between good and evil. Good and evil are objective realities that are the same for all people, places, and times. Good and evil do not change because God does not change, and man does not change. The moral law is equally obligatory on all human beings because all human beings are equally and unchangeably created in the image of God. The summary of the moral law is the Ten Commandments. The summary of the Ten Commandments is to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself. Every moral law: every good and every evil; can ultimately be placed under these two commands: love God and love your neighbor. Every evil ultimately breaks one of these two laws, every good ultimately keeps them.
The idea of law inherently includes authority. Authority is coercive power. Government is the imposition of some amount of authority given to some humans to exercise over others. Human governments are instituted—according to the will of God—to keep the moral law. They have authority from God for this and no other purpose. Scripture states that every authority figure is God’s minister for good (Rom. 13:4). God gives humans authority over other humans to protect the good and to punish the evildoer (Rom. 13:3; WCF 23:1). This is true of all human governments. The authority of parents, teachers, elders, contractors, employers, HR departments, army officers, civil magistrates, judges, baseball umpires, presidents, and babysitters is given solely for this and no other purpose: to protect the good and to punish the evil, or to say it another way, to uphold the moral law. To whatever degree authorities do not uphold the moral law they are abusing or being derelict in their duties.
Therefore, everyone in authority is accountable to God to do what they can, according to their power and position, to uphold the moral law of God. There are no other grounds for one person to have authority over another. Because all human beings are equally human, equally made in the image of God, no one person is born having inherent authority over another person, for there are no grounds for it when we consider human nature simply and exclusively. Now when we take into account additional factors beyond human nature, like relationships such as between children and parents, then we have a basis on which to subject one—children, to the rule of another—parents, which is good and right considering the origin and dependence of children on parents for everything. However, because that authority is relational and not according to some natural inequality, once children are adults, parents naturally lose their position of authority over them. However, while they are in authority over them, parents are accountable to God to exercise their authority to protect and promote the good and to punish the evil actions of their children. The relationship of parents to children makes this responsibility inescapable.
Similarly, every legal American citizen, not currently incarcerated or in some way incapacitated, is by way of relationship to this country in a position of authority for which he or she is accountable to God: to promote and protect the good and to punish the evil behavior of everyone under this nation’s government. The United States’ Constitution is the highest human authority in this nation. And according to that constitution, those in positions of authority are put there by the authoritative election of the citizenry. Therefore Romans 13 applies directly to you as you exercise your authority by voting. Wherever there is a choice between candidates, where one of those candidates, if elected, will clearly do more to uphold the moral law of God to protect the good and punish evil, you have a moral obligation before God to vote for that candidate. That is how you exercise your God-given authoritative position as voter, to protect the good and punish the evil. It does not matter which candidate you like more, which one looks or sounds more like you, which one will make your life easier in some way, which one acts nicer or friendlier, which one the newscasters like more, or anything else. The only thing that matters, accordingly to your moral obligation before God to do whatever you can with your God-given authority to protect good and punish evil, is which candidate will actually do that when elected? Which candidate will do more to punish evil and protect the good as these categories are defined by the word of God?
To NOT vote according to this one question is to be derelict or abusive in the authority you have as a voter. Now no one exercises authority perfectly: no parent, police officer, professor, or president. But when you are in any of these or other positions of authority, you are obligated, in every instance, to do what is most good and least evil. Consequently, when you are in the authoritative position of voter, you are obligated by the authority of your position, to put people into government (authoritative) offices who will exercise their authority most in accordance with this same law of God, which binds and is the reason for all authority. So, if in the providence of God there are only two persons who can realistically be elected president, and one of them would clearly do more to protect the good and punish evil, you must vote for that person. It does not matter that both of those persons are seriously flawed, have done bad things, or have other checks against them. If in the providence of God, one of them will be running this country, and if by that same providence you have been given the great authority, privilege, and sober responsibility of choosing which one, you must not be derelict in your duty, you must not rebel against God because you don’t like the two choices He has sovereignly put before you. You must vote for the one who you have sound reasons to believe will better do his duty to protect the good and punish the evil doer. If you can see a difference between them according to this ultimate standard, then to not vote, or to vote for neither of the only two who can win, is to abuse and misuse the authority of voter, that God has graciously given to you. If one of them will clearly do better, or to say it another way, if one of them will clearly do LESS EVIL, then to not vote for that one is to not faithfully exercise your authority of voter, and the reason for which you have been given it, in accordance with the will and word of God.
Now, is there a discernable difference between the only two candidates who at this date can realistically be elected president, according to the raison d’être of all authorities: punishing the evil and protecting the good? It seems to me on clear moral issues like abortion, sexual immorality, and the monstrous evils of the transgender movement, which has been pushing their views into elementary schools, that the choice is as clear and obvious as night and day. Right now, all over this country, public school children in fifth grade and even earlier are being shown videos and other materials encouraging them to consider sinful and harmful views of sexual orientation, gender identity, masturbation, and other related evils. Increasingly, parents across America are not being told that their children have, through the manipulation and indoctrination of transgenderism, “identified” as something other than the boy or girl that they genetically and unchangeably are. Claims of schools providing powerful hormones and puberty blockers to pre-pubescent children without parental consent are on the rise. As are alleged instances where children have been taken from their parents for not going along with their child’s new “gender identity,” and all of the Dr. Frankenstein procedures “experts” and authorities are saying are necessary to keep one’s child from suicide: including permanent sterilization, maiming, and disfiguring. Can there be a more significant issue than this? Would anyone seriously set disputed and questionable issues—like policies of welfare, immigration, and climate change with all of their complexities, possibilities, and wide-ranging consequences and details, on which experts continually disagree and so-called solutions are regularly proven wrong—alongside of promoting, practicing, and legally protecting the maiming and sterilizing of otherwise healthy children? On these life and death issues, on these issues directly addressed by the Bible, there is a clear as day choice. One candidate and one party celebrate transgenderism and is seeking to mandate “gender-affirming care” in schools, hospitals, and everywhere else. The other candidate and party are trying to protect parental rights and consent for their children, and employees’ rights to dissent from and opt out of transgender-promoting activities without losing their jobs. You have been entrusted with authority from God to vote for one of these candidates. You will answer for how you wielded that authority according to God’s one and only standard for all authority: protecting the good-doer and punishing the evil-doer. Now what will you do?
Ray E. Heiple Jr. is a Minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and is Senior Pastor of Providence PCA in Robinson Twp., PA

Related Posts:

.kb-row-layout-id223392_4ab238-bd > .kt-row-column-wrap{align-content:start;}:where(.kb-row-layout-id223392_4ab238-bd > .kt-row-column-wrap) > .wp-block-kadence-column{justify-content:start;}.kb-row-layout-id223392_4ab238-bd > .kt-row-column-wrap{column-gap:var(–global-kb-gap-md, 2rem);row-gap:var(–global-kb-gap-md, 2rem);padding-top:var(–global-kb-spacing-sm, 1.5rem);padding-bottom:var(–global-kb-spacing-sm, 1.5rem);grid-template-columns:minmax(0, 1fr);}.kb-row-layout-id223392_4ab238-bd{background-color:#dddddd;}.kb-row-layout-id223392_4ab238-bd > .kt-row-layout-overlay{opacity:0.30;}@media all and (max-width: 1024px){.kb-row-layout-id223392_4ab238-bd > .kt-row-column-wrap{grid-template-columns:minmax(0, 1fr);}}@media all and (max-width: 767px){.kb-row-layout-id223392_4ab238-bd > .kt-row-column-wrap{grid-template-columns:minmax(0, 1fr);}}
.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18 > .kt-inside-inner-col,.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18 > .kt-inside-inner-col:before{border-top-left-radius:0px;border-top-right-radius:0px;border-bottom-right-radius:0px;border-bottom-left-radius:0px;}.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18 > .kt-inside-inner-col{column-gap:var(–global-kb-gap-sm, 1rem);}.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18 > .kt-inside-inner-col{flex-direction:column;}.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18 > .kt-inside-inner-col > .aligncenter{width:100%;}.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18 > .kt-inside-inner-col:before{opacity:0.3;}.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18{position:relative;}@media all and (max-width: 1024px){.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18 > .kt-inside-inner-col{flex-direction:column;}}@media all and (max-width: 767px){.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18 > .kt-inside-inner-col{flex-direction:column;}}

Subscribe to Free “Top 10 Stories” Email
Get the top 10 stories from The Aquila Report in your inbox every Tuesday morning.

As we remember Jesus’ death on Good Friday and celebrate the Risen Christ on Easter Sunday, let us remember the sufferers in the midst of our churches. There will be people that need us to tenderly speak to them and build them up with words of gospel hope. They may come hopeless, even feeling as if God is against them. Let us give them words of life, “For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth…I shall see God” (Job 19:25-26).   

Soon believers all around the world will celebrate Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Some will go to church because they are expected to do so by family. Others will go because they know the joy of gathering together on the Lord’s Day to worship Him. Still others will show up broken and tormented by trials that have torn them asunder. They may even be wondering if God “counts [them] as his adversary” (Job 19:11). The church needs to come around them and tenderly speak words of hope. Job 19 gives us a window into how the righteous suffer, and ultimately a window into our Savior’s suffering, as well as a glimpse of the sufferer’s only hope.
Job’s suffering was considerable, but perhaps it was the words of his friends that broke him and tormented him the most (Job 19:2). Instead of comforting Job they magnified themselves against him and wrongly pointed to his disgrace as evidence of some secret sin. But Job was suffering because of his godliness (1:8). Job found his friends to be “miserable comforters” (16:2). They had failed to approach him in tenderness and build him up. God’s people are to speak in ways that are only “good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear” (Eph. 4:29). In this way we reflect the tenderness and grace of Jesus who invites “all who labor and are heavy laden” to “come to Me” (Matt. 11:28).
When the Lord spoke with Satan, the adversary claimed that Job feared God because the Lord had “put a hedge around him and his house and all that he has, on every side” (Job 1:10). Ironically, Job says that “He has walled up my way, so that I cannot pass” (19:8). He concludes that God has “kindled his wrath against me and counts me as his adversary” (19:11). But nothing could be further from the truth. His adversary is Satan, not God (1:11; 2:5).
Read More

And so also do some say that such people in our own midst experience this lust unchosen, that it is largely fixed and unlikely to ever dissipate in this life, and that it would be unfair to deprive them of participation in something that others are allowed to experience. You seem to accept this position, or at the least to not think it is one that deserves condemnation, and you put your efforts into opposing those that seek to combat things like Revoice.

Read Part 1 and Part 2
The Dangers of Activism
There is danger in approaching the church as you do. He who engages in denominational politics, regardless of his faction, must heed this danger, for it is easy to become so bogged down with politicking that the common work of ministry is drowned out. In this you do poorly, and I fear the direction and consequences of your labors, that they tend to evil.
Perhaps you will appeal to the example of the Reformers and say that you only follow after their example in the spirit of semper reformanda. But they did not work to change a church that was faithful, but one that was false and in a state of “Babylonian” captivity. You approach the church as though it is a thing that you might fashion according to your own preferences. You seem to forget that the church belongs to Christ, and that he is a jealous king who will not share his glory with another. He is the dread majesty who “is a consuming fire” (Heb. 12:29) and who “dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see” (1 Tim. 6:16).
Those who rule in his church ought always to remember that they should do so in his manner, openly and honorably, and they must never forget that all power and dominion in the church is his alone and that we are not free to do with or in the church as we will, but are mere stewards and servants of him who is the “only Sovereign” (1 Tim. 6:15). Consider the advice of one who was zealous in sundry activities, but who strayed from God in the midst of his doings:
Guard your steps when you go to the house of God. To draw near to listen is better than to offer the sacrifice of fools, for they do not know that they are doing evil. Be not rash with your mouth, nor let your heart be hasty to utter a word before God, for God is in heaven and you are on earth. Therefore let your words be few. (Ecc. 5:1-2)
The church is God’s house, and they who deal with it should not be hasty in seeking to administer its affairs or in setting her policies and form at the highest levels (Lk. 14:10). Much unintentional harm has been done in this world by those that meant well but who could not see the consequences of their actions. Who can say where this activist spirit will lead, or what others who learn from its example will do? The temper of a thing often lingers after its immediate purpose is forgotten, and it may be that the activist tendency endures long after the present debates in the PCA are relics of the past.
The Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy transpired long ago, and yet the same spirit that reorganized Princeton Seminary is still at work in the PCUSA, albeit yet more faithless, and it leads her to follow the culture at every step, even into her own oblivion. Can you be sure that this activist spirit that you embody will not break free of restraint and lead you or others in bad directions? Is it not perhaps better to forego such a tendency and do the work of an elder in simplicity, giving little heed to politicking and instead keeping the faith as it has been delivered to us?
A Contemporary Failing
There is concern also in your position regarding Revoice. You believe that homosexual lust does not disqualify one from office and that the church would effectively wrong those that manifest it by refusing to ordain them. Does office exist for those that desire it? Is it not rather a position of service that places those that hold it in subjection to the needs of the sheep? No one has any right to office, and the denomination wrongs no one if it determines that the nature of someone’s lust prevents him from serving effectively or makes him morally unfit. In this you think along worldly lines, regarding the individual as possessing absolute rights to do as he wishes, and regarding it as unfair if others object or attempt to assert their own rights in turn. “This is the age in which thin and theoretic minorities can cover and conquer unconscious and untheoretic majorities” (G.K. Chesterton). It is an age in which the individual is everything and the corporate body nothing, in which a radical individualism prevails and says that the individual’s personal fulfillment is everything and that collective bodies have no rights of their own and exist only to assist individuals in finding their own career fulfillment or emotional acceptance (by self and others), or other such notions of personal wellbeing (or “flourishing”).
You upset the proper relation of things and seem to regard the church as existing to give the individual an occasion to labor, not the office holder as existing to feed the sheep (comp. Mk. 10:42-45; Jn. 21:15-17; Eph. 4:11-14). How else can we explain your horror that the PCA might refuse to ordain men who experience persistent homosexual lust or even remove them from office? In this two things are especially concerning.
One is that you have sworn to your acceptance of our form of government as part of your ordination, a form of government which says “every Christian Church, or union or association of particular churches, is entitled to declare the terms of admission into its communion and the qualifications of its ministers and members” and that even if it errs in doing this “it does not infringe upon the liberty or the rights of others, but only makes an improper use of its own.” You like Preliminary Principle I, because you think it elevates individual conscience above corporate conscience, the minister over the denomination that ordains, invests, and supervises him. But you seem to ignore Principle II, which qualifies principle I and establishes the practical rights of the corporate church body.
It is further concerning that the basic argument that some in our midst use is the same as that which was successfully used to normalize immorality in society. It was repeated ad nauseam that homosexuals are such because of an orientation that is immutable and unchosen, and that it was wrong to deprive them of things that others could experience because they did not choose this orientation. It was felt to be unfair for society to determine the nature and qualifications of its most basic institution of marriage.
And so also do some say that such people in our own midst experience this lust unchosen, that it is largely fixed and unlikely to ever dissipate in this life, and that it would be unfair to deprive them of participation in something that others are allowed to experience. You seem to accept this position, or at the least to not think it is one that deserves condemnation, and you put your efforts into opposing those that seek to combat things like Revoice. Thus do you participate, for all intents and purposes, in a contemporary movement to normalize homosexuality in the church. God says this is an abomination that should not be tolerated or even mentioned (Eph. 5:3), and that he has delivered men from it (1 Cor. 6:9), but you say it does not unfit one for office and that those who think it does are the ones who act unreasonably and unfairly.
Thus, do you effectively excuse what God condemns; and if you elsewhere teach an orthodox position you ought to consider that such an inconsistency cannot long exist (Matt. 6:24; 12:25) and that one of the principles must eventually win out to the utter exclusion of the other. You cannot espouse an orthodox view of sexuality and marriage on the one hand and then accept the concept of homosexual identity and put great energies into asserting a “right” for self-professed homosexuals to lead in the church on the other, especially when the basic argument that is used to normalize such lust and the basic conception of those that experience it is invading our denomination’s public discourse from the wider culture and is not gleaned from God’s word. We are only having this debate because the culture has already done so, and if it had not done so we would not be doing so now, for the impetus for it comes from culture and not from Scripture.
Tom Hervey is a member of Woodruff Road Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Simpsonville, S.C.