The Incarnation is the greatest gift ever given in the history of the universe. God, the Creator of the universe, distinct from his creation, is so great that he cannot be wrapped up by our limited human minds, yet in the manger, God was wrapped up as the gift of himself to us, in the person of his Son, the Redeemer of sinful creatures. This immense God humbly entered human culture via a baby in an animal feeding trough. He humbled himself for our benefit. This should be our attitude to others as we humbly speak the gospel that defends binary sexuality and also offers us a place at the wedding feast of Jesus Christ. 

I can remember when public Christian witness was a welcomed contribution to the life of the culture. In my recent article The Fourth Phase: Persecution? I mentioned Aaron Renn, who describes three phases of the relationship between the secular culture and biblical Christianity. He notes the general acceptance in the 1960s to general opposition today. I have lived through that period, since I saw the enormous influence of evangelical Christianity when I came to study in the US in the 1960s. In its adamant rejection of God the Creator, today’s progressivism illustrates the chasm between two opposing moral systems of social justice in the culture; between biblical faith and wokism. Both compete for the same ground. This is perhaps why Christian cultural witness is now so confusing for Christians. Politics has become religious and, in the main, religiously anti–Christian, ever ready to “cancel” traditional biblical morality.
Progressivism attempts to normalize what was once considered abnormal behavior. It seems to be succeeding. Christians must be ready to live in this new situation, just as the early Christians, who lived in Rome, were surrounded by an overwhelmingly degenerate culture. Imagine the President of the United States publicly marrying two men, one as his wife and one as his husband! That is what the Emperor Nero did during the time of Paul. Imagine a Vice President as a lesbian witch.
From Abnormal to Normal
Our leading politicians openly endorse Drag Queen Story Hour readings for children. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), a professing Roman Catholic, posted a clip on Twitter in which she declares that drag queens are “what America is all about.” A Department of Energy whistleblower’s letter notes that a drag queen, Sam Brinton, had been picked as a Deputy Assistant Secretary at the DOE “over other more highly qualified candidates.”[1] Brinton is a self-proclaimed “kink activist” (dog fetishes are his specialty), who belongs to a drag queen group known as the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.[2] The administration sent Brinton to a diplomatic function for a Bastille Day celebration at the French Embassy in Paris. He proudly appeared in his dress and heels together with the first trans-woman Admiral, Rachel Levine, father of two grown children. The public worship of scandalous, unbridled sexuality is waved aloft around the world as an emblem of our newly enthroned US morality. It’s all perfectly normal.[3] We have normalized LGBTQ+ sex, drag, pornography, abortion, and a host of newly named iniquities. It has recently become known that Yoel Roth, chief of Twitter’s “Trust and Safety board” determining what was published and what was silenced for the general public on Twitter, including the Hunter Biden laptop scandal, was a gay practicing drag queen.[4] In the same vein, a well-known drag artist, Marti Cummings, invited to the White House to celebrate the new law on gay marriage, celebrated his invitation to the event by tweeting, “To be a non-binary drag artist invited to the White House is something I never imagined would happen. Thank you President and Dr. Biden for inviting me to this historic bill signing. Grateful doesn’t begin to express the emotions I feel.” One of his tweets about children is so degrading that I only dare put it in a footnote.[5] Open decadency has climbed into the highest seats of power in the country.  
Christian parents are quickly realizing that their children are in danger and under attack. One California teacher boasted about a “queer library” she keeps for her class. It contains sexually explicit content, including kink and orgies, as well as information on BDSM (bondage, discipline, dominance, submission, and sadism). She claims that these books help students to “figure out who they are.”[6]
In the recent Children’s and Family Emmy Awards, sponsored by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, the winners’ acceptance speeches overwhelmingly promoted pro-LGBTQ content and other far-left concepts. Hosted over the course of two nights, the event was intended for an audience of children ranging from “infancy to age 15.” One quarter of the awards featured characters or stories involving sexual preference or gender identity. One winner, the Disney-owned series “Muppet Babies,” received the award for Outstanding Writing for a Preschool Animated Program. One episode in that series puts a heavy focus on “Gonzo-rella,” a male character, Gonzo, who decides to identify as “non-binary,” to wear women’s dresses, and to use “they/them” pronouns.[7] Our ruling elites are recasting sin as virtue and virtue as sin, daring us to object. Kurt Schlichter bluntly and sarcastically suggests a way of reacting: “America, We Can Choose Not to Tolerate Weirdos: Time to stop accepting the idea that we need to pretend weirdos are not weird.[8]Unfortunately the situation is not amusing. At the highest level of leadership, we find a determined agenda to make the weird normal.
Christians must find a way of speaking in the public square, especially to the LGBTQ sexual ideology. Knowing and honoring God is at stake, and gay sex, says Paul, is unnatural; against nature. Progressives howl in rage if you say they are grooming children. But they are. Why are pedophiles and their sympathizers allowed to run rampant in our society? Victor Davis Hanson, a guest lecturer at Hillsdale College, proposes ten political ways to save America, but the closest he gets to sexual issues is the phrase: “Like it or not, the nuclear family remains the bulwark of the American nation, which will not survive if current fertility rates of below 1.7 children per woman continue to diminish and age the population. The government must incentivize childbearing and child raising.”[9] Even our more conservative politicians will not save us from cultural sexual degeneracy and demographic collapse. Even Ex-President Donald Trump has emerged as a social radical, which we already knew he was. At a reception at Mar-a-Lago for the gay Log Cabin Republicans on December 16th, 2022 Trump received a standing ovation after delivering an enthusiastic affirmation of gay rights. “We are fighting for the gay community, and we are fighting and fighting hard.”[10]According to Gallup, 55 percent of Republicans and 71 percent of Americans overall support same-sex marriage. In normalizing homosexuality, our culture is determined to follow the example of ancient Roman culture. That culture eventually collapsed, of course. Apparently “conservatives” do not see the problem. Can Christians join the happy chorus?
Standing in the Gap for our Children
Statistics show that COVID-19 lock-downs and closed schools have caused many school children to suffer psychological problems, including suicidal thoughts. Larry Sand, a former classroom teacher, is the president of the non-profit California Teachers Empowerment Network, which studies educational issues. Among the problems seen among children learning via the internet was “anomie,” that is, “no law.” In thinking about this issue, Strand follows American sociologist Robert K. Merton, who pioneered the sociology of deviance, based on Emile Durkheim’s theory of anomie. Following Merton, Sand describes this situation as
the breakdown of law…a breakdown of the ties that bind people together to make a functional society…Periods of anomie are unstable, chaotic, and often rife with conflict because the social force of the norms and values that otherwise provide stability is weakened or missing.[11]
Sand remarks that anti-racist classrooms have devolved into little more than a series of “scoldings, guilt-trips, and demands to demean oneself simply to make another feel empowered. And of course, the schools’ forays into intimate sexual areas are also doing great damage.”[12]
Changing laws about male and female, which have lasted for thousands of years and are confirmed by human biology, can surely be described as creating a situation of anomie, of unsettling lawlessness, to which Christians must speak, even at the risk of cultural rejection, for the sake of human beings and for the honor of God.
But speaking out is costly. Paivi Rasanen, a 27-year member of the Finnish parliament, has been accused by government prosecutors of hate speech, for comments she made on three occasions about gay people. Mrs. Rasanen denies the charges and stands by her words, which she says are based on the Bible.[13] In America, Christians may also be charged for hate speech, incendiary language, or of speech leading to intended or even unintended violent actions. Their words are considered to be an encouragement for real-world violence. Christians must speak carefully, while still speaking truth.
In denouncing gay ideology, Christians must find a discourse that avoids emotionalism, moralism, hatred or bigotry, while reaching to the heart of the issue. There can be no contempt for gay individuals. A homosexual or trans person deserves respect and love as a unique and complex fellow human being, made in God’s image. God extends love to any who will come to him in repentance. In the original Fall, every human being apart from Jesus himself, is tainted by sin. In addition to the basic respect we owe every individual, we must also be keenly aware that many have known much suffering and hurt by early sexual abuse, rejection, confusion and even from heartless, dismissive expressions of judgment from misguided believers. Christians cannot forget the gospel context in which there is a priority for the communication of God’s forgiving love, of which all human beings stand in need. If God is rich in “kindness, forbearance and patience…that lead to repentance” (Romans 2:4), so must be God’s people. We must love our homosexual friends.
Millennial Christians are leaving the church in droves over this issue and need a clear statement of the truth from their elders. To understand sexuality, we need to hear not a judgmental, but a holistic, ontological account of what the Bible says about sexuality. If you worship God, you will believe that he is the Creator—an external, intelligent, personal God. According to Scripture, the world is the work of an external Creator who caringly made it but is separate and different from it. We have a hetero-cosmology (a binary worldview based on otherness and difference), not a homo-cosmology (the nonbinary blending of all things). Homo-cosmology has nothing to worship except the creation itself, since it rejects the God who made the world and put distinctions within it. As the Apostle Paul argued, we worship either the Creator or the creation (Romans 1:25).
How have these two fundamental worldviews worked themselves out in recent culture with regard to sexuality? People now speak of non-binary spirituality and non-binary sexuality. They are clearly related. Non-binary spirituality believes everything is God and that there is no divine, separate Creator. Non-binary sexuality holds to androgynous sex, in which there are no ultimate sexual distinctions. Binary, distinction-making thinking is the foundation of the gospel, in which God the Creator, totally other from us, in his Son, identifies with created reality, dies to pay the price of sin, but remains distinct from the creation. Binary sexuality witnesses to this truth in its own way, since we are made in God’s image, distinctly male and female.
Some this Christmas will stand next to a pagan priest of Satan, rather than worshiping the newborn King. We should not be surprised. The early church witnessed this in the pagan cities of the Roman Empire. Some of the Christians had once participated in such ceremonies, but the power of the gospel is unquenchable.
We may think that our culture has wandered far from binary gospel truth, but as I drive around in late December, I see our neighborhood festooned with bright lights telling me it is Christmas. Christmas means the worship [Christ-mass] of Christ. Though it has largely been stripped of its true message, the Christmas celebration is still a major event in our cultural history. Let’s use this so that people hear the good news of God, which, in turn, is good for the culture. The Incarnation is the greatest gift ever given in the history of the universe. God, the Creator of the universe, distinct from his creation, is so great that he cannot be wrapped up by our limited human minds, yet in the manger, God was wrapped up as the gift of himself to us, in the person of his Son, the Redeemer of sinful creatures. This immense God humbly entered human culture via a baby in an animal feeding trough. He humbled himself for our benefit. This should be our attitude to others as we humbly speak the gospel that defends binary sexuality and also offers us a place at the wedding feast of Jesus Christ.
Have courage. We are on the winning side.
Dr. Peter Jones is scholar in residence at Westminster Seminary California and associate pastor at New Life Presbyterian Church in Escondido, Calif. He is director of truthXchange, a communications center aimed at equipping the Christian community to recognize and effectively respond to the rise of paganism. This article is used with permission.

[1] https://www.frontpagemag.com/bidens-nuclear-drag-queen-stole-womens-clothing.
[2] David Strom, “Biden’s transgender DOE appointee is charged with a felony,” Hot Air, Nov. 28, 2022.
[3] https://www.frontpagemag.com/this-thanksgiving-the-nation-was-grateful-for-abortions.
[4] http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/free-speech/joseph-vazquez/2022/12/17/fbi-files-musk-releases-new-docs-exposing-twitters.
[5] “Kids are out to sing and suck D!” https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/4116181/post.
[6] https://nypost.com/2022/12/04/teacher-claims-queer-library-with-bdsm-themed-books-helped-kids-figure-out-who-they-are.
[7] Eric Lendrum, “First-Ever Emmy Awards for Children Heavily Pushes LGBT Content,” American Greatness, (16 Dec, 2022).
[8] SeekAndFind, Townhall, 12/15/2022, https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/4116528/posts
[9] Victor Davis Hanson, “10 Steps to Save America,” American Thinker, 18 Dec, 2022, “Cut the Debt, Secure the Border, Tap Natural Resources, Oppose Discrimination, Disrupt and Reform Higher Education, Revive the Armed Forces, Fix Voting. Drain the Swamp, Upend the Welfare State, Restore Norms.”
[10] https://www.politico.com/news/2022/12/16/celebration-same-sex-marriage-mar-a-lago-00074441.
[11] Larry Sand, “Losing a Generation: School-related cultural upheaval is taking a serious toll on children,” December 19, 2022, https://www.frontpagemag.com/losing-a-generation.
[12] Art.cit.
[13] https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/finland-s-bible-tweet-trial-should-trouble-us-all.
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Written by Ben C. Dunson |
Tuesday, July 25, 2023
When Jesus refers to the kingdom of God he is referring to the final form of God’s kingdom, which is the saving kingdom that he ushers into the world through his perfect life, atoning death, and glorious resurrection. That is to say: Jesus is not referring with the phrase “kingdom of God” to God’s universal kingship over all things in a generic sense, but to the kingdom that will be manifest in the salvation he accomplishes and then pours out on his people. It is a “spiritual” kingdom, though it has profound implications for how its citizens live in this world.

A Wall of Separation
Thomas Jefferson famously wrote in an 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptist Association that the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibiting the Federal government from making any laws “respecting an establishment of religion” meant that there was, and must be in America, an absolute “wall of separation between Church & State.”
Although Jefferson was only referring to establishment on the Federal level, which is indeed prohibited in the First Amendment, his phrase has come to represent for many Americans something much more expansive. It has, in fact, become a commonplace to indicate that the State can have nothing whatsoever to do with God or even the basic moral truths found in the Bible. Such an understanding has become predominant even among many Christians. But is it correct?
Separating church and state is extremely important. It is thoroughly biblical to do so, and the best thinkers in the Christian tradition have recognized the importance of doing so, although in a way very different from the modern conception of Jefferson’s wall of separation. There is a sense in which church and state must be absolutely separate and a sense in which they cannot be thought of separately at all. Each has its own unique realm of authority that must be preserved from unwarranted intrusion from the other, while neither can be sealed off completely from the other.
However, to adequately address the relationship between church and state we have to back up. The broader historical-theological concept into which the discussion of church and state falls is that of God’s “two kingdoms.” At its most basic level, the classic Protestant two kingdoms doctrine means that God rules over his spiritual kingdom, the church, in one way, and rules over the world outside the church in a different way. This is sometimes taken (wrongly) almost as if God doesn’t rule over the world outside the church at all, but it should not be understood in that way.
In this article I will introduce the doctrine of God’s two kingdoms, and then I will more briefly focus on how this idea illuminates the relationship between church and state. I’ll also explain some key biblical texts that deal with these difficult (and often fraught) relationships. The goal is to help Christians understand the divine purposes for each realm.
Defining the Two Kingdoms
As Brad Littlejohn puts it, for classical Protestant thinkers: “The two kingdoms were not two institutions or even two domains of the world, but two ways in which the kingship of Christ made itself felt in the life of each and every believer.” Referring to Christ’s comprehensive reign over all things Abraham Kuyper famously wrote that “there is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: ‘Mine!’” All fine and good, but what does this mean precisely? For example, if Jesus is king over all things should church and state be merged, with the officers of the church ruling the state as well? Should the state rule over the church? Is there another way that such realms should be related? The classic Protestant doctrine of the two kingdoms helps answer these very questions.
This is not an exhaustive historical survey, so I’ll simply quote from John Calvin to illustrate this historical strand of thought:
The former [the spiritual government] has its seat within the soul, the latter [the temporal government] only regulates the external conduct. We may call the one the spiritual, the other the civil kingdom. Now, these two, as we have divided them, are always to be viewed apart from each other. When the one is considered, we should call off our minds, and not allow them to think of the other. For there exists in man a kind of two worlds, over which different kings and different laws can preside . . . . The question . . . though not very obscure, or perplexing in itself, occasions difficulty to many, because they do not distinguish with sufficient accuracy between what is called the external forum, and the forum of conscience.
Though it is sometimes mistakenly taken as such, Calvin’s point (which is representative of classic Protestant thinking on the whole) is not that there is one realm in which Christ rules (the spiritual realm) and another with which he has nothing to do (a non-spiritual realm), but rather that the Christian always lives simultaneously in both worlds. And it is also the case that Christ rules over both worlds, though his rule looks different according to the specific nature of each realm (for the sake of clarity and consistency I will refer to the “spiritual” and “external” kingdoms in the rest of this article).
Christ rules over the spiritual realm, or kingdom, by his word. In this kingdom the consciences of believers may only be bound insofar as Scripture itself binds them, and the focus of this kingdom is eternal salvation and the spiritual well-being of the saints. The spiritual kingdom is the sum total of believers and their children.
Does this mean the external realm, or kingdom, is a moral free for all? Not at all. Christ also rules over that realm, although in a fundamentally different way. The charter of the external kingdom is not the Bible (strictly speaking) though the Bible informs life in the civil kingdom. The charter for the external kingdom is derived in different ways from the imprint of God’s law in nature, the human conscience, the voice of tradition, human law and history, and more.
Properly separating the spiritual kingdom from the external kingdom that encompasses everything outside of the spiritual is vital. The spiritual kingdom, God’s saving work in the lives of his people, must be distinguished from everything earthly and temporal. Distinguishing, however, is not the same thing as radically separating or divorcing. My leaf blower’s engine requires a precise blend of oil and gasoline to operate. Oil is not gasoline; they are distinguished. But my engine will not run without both; they cannot be radically separated. The same is true of God’s two kingdoms.
The Two Kingdoms in Scripture
So far I’ve only been giving definitions and explanations. Now we must turn to Scripture. The focus in this section will be on a variety of texts that show us the distinction between God’s two kingdoms.
The Spiritual Kingdom
God is king over all things. Of this there is no dispute: “The Lord is king forever and ever; the nations perish from his land” (Ps 10:16); “For God is the King of all the earth; sing praises with a psalm” (Ps 47:7)!
In Jesus’s earthly ministry he also proclaims his Father’s dominion over all things, for example, teaching his disciples to pray for God’s kingdom to come, and his will be done, on earth as it is in heaven (Matt 6:10). But something unique and vital is introduced into Christ’s preaching of God’s kingdom.
Read More
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A realistic assessment of our present situation in America would have to admit that overturning the 2015 Supreme Court’s decision legalizing gay marriage is at best improbable, and rewriting the First Amendment is nearly insurmountable. Of course, no Christian living in 312 A.D. could have imagined that a Christian empire would emerge just one year later when Constantine issued the Edict of Milan in 313 A.D. Regardless of the precise cause of the Christendom’s end, we would do well to remember that Christendom was born in just such a time as this.

In an article that appeared in the Aquila Report on November 8, 2021, Chris Gordon makes the argument that “Christendom has come to an end in America.” He cites Robert Godfrey who claims that something very specific “has happened in America that brought Christendom to an end”—namely, “the 2015 Supreme Court’s decision to legalize gay marriage.”
In general, this is a very good and informative article that is worth reading. I take no issue with its assertion that Christendom has come to an end in America. Nor do I disagree with the author’s claim that “everything seems to be unraveling,” and “something very demonic is at work before us in our present moment.”  I would, however, like to suggest that Christendom’s end took place much further back in American history than the Supreme Court’s decision to legalize gay marriage in 2015.
Indeed, I wish Gordon and Godfrey were right in their assertion. If only the end of Christendom in America was actually the result of the 2015 Supreme Court’s decision to legalize gay marriage, then the restoration of Christendom could be accomplished simply by overturning the court’s decision. While overturning the court’s decision would be of monumental importance for the church, the country, and the common good, overall, it would do little to restore Christendom.
As Oliver O’Donovan has observed there are many competing causes for the end of Christendom, but one sticks out more than the rest: the Establishment Clause, and the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. For O’Donovan, the end of Christendom was not in 2015, but in 1791.
There is both paradox and irony here. The paradox can be seen in that the First Amendment as conceived by the founders was supposed to be the guarantor and protector of Christendom. Yet it is precisely this amendment that was used to trigger antireligious sentiment, and the weakening of the church in society. The irony is that the First Amendment is the most cherished and championed of all amendments by the majority of evangelicals. Yet it was the quintessential flaw of the founder’s political theory in that it nearly guaranteed that theology and politics would thereafter be permanently separated.
D.D. Clark correctly recognized that the founders never anticipated this outcome. They never envisioned that atheists, antitrinitarians, Roman Catholics, and Muslims would ever legally hold office. Their context was one of Christian hegemony not religious pluralism. They wished only to separate the legal tie between the Crown and the church as it existed in England. Nevertheless, in the First amendment, they provided the framework for the end of Christendom.
How different America might be at present if only our founders would have enshrined Christianity in the text of the constitution rather than asserting a vague notion of the free exercise of religion. This does not mean, as so many evangelicals presume, that other religions would be discriminated against as a necessary condition. We only need point to Hungry, Poland, and Finland as examples of the contrary. But of course, we have to disabuse ourselves of any utopian ideas on the one hand (such as the existence of a country without any discrimination at all), and to recognize the country in which we now live on the other hand (a country in which discrimination against Christians is becoming alarmingly routine).
A realistic assessment of our present situation in America would have to admit that overturning the 2015 Supreme Court’s decision legalizing gay marriage is at best improbable, and rewriting the First Amendment is nearly insurmountable. Of course, no Christian living in 312 A.D. could have imagined that a Christian empire would emerge just one year later when Constantine issued the Edict of Milan in 313 A.D. Regardless of the precise cause of Christendom’s end, we would do well to remember that Christendom was born in just such a time as this.
Jim Fitzgerald is a Minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and a missionary with Equipping Pastors International.