Kings Shall Be Thy Nursing-Fathers

Christian nationalism argued from the text of Scripture

Mike Winger has asked for a defense of Christian nationalism from the text of Scripture, thorough enough to establish both what the passages mean and how they apply, and particular enough that it is not what every Christian already thinks. We take his terms as our test. The view we defend is that rulers hold their office under the risen Christ, judge by his written word, restrain public idolatry and blasphemy, and protect and provide for his church, without compelling belief or taking the pulpit. We argue it from Psalm 2, Romans 13, the Gentile kings of Daniel and Ezra, and Isaiah 49, and we say where we part with Stephen Wolfe.

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The question

On October 27, 2026, the Bible teacher Mike Winger asked on X for a resource that defends Christian nationalism from Scripture, and he said he had not seen one that even tries. He set three terms. The defense must come from the text, not from what he called “broad principles narrowly applied,” and appeals to history or the Reformers do not count unless they do the textual work themselves. It must analyze the passages closely enough to establish both their interpretation and their application. And it must defend a particular view, not one so broad that every Christian already holds it, or so loose that it could be stretched just as easily toward the opposite conclusion. He added that if someone showed the view to be solidly biblical, he would not only submit to it but advocate for it in public.

The best-known book on the subject does not attempt what he asks. Stephen Wolfe’s The Case for Christian Nationalism (2022) defines its subject as the whole of a nation’s laws and customs “conducted by a Christian nation as a Christian nation” for its earthly and heavenly good (9, as quoted in Gentle Reformation, 2024). Reformed Christian Politics (2026), which Wolfe wrote with Zachary Garris and Sean McGowan, says in summarizing him that the gospel supplies no political principles, and it calls the magistrate’s duty to religion a natural duty that revelation fills in (200). Wolfe’s Baptist critics have answered him on that ground. Andrew Walker, who teaches ethics at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, judged the book a work of logic more than of exegesis and found “no positive command in Scripture for the state to promote religion” of the kind Wolfe describes (9Marks, 9 December 2022). Winger’s request falls between the two. One side rests the case on nature, and the other answers that Scripture does not make it.

We take Winger’s terms as the test of this paper and hold ourselves to them. Sections 03 through 08 argue from Scripture alone, and where they name a modern writer it is to say who holds an objection, not to lean on him. History appears once, in section 11, after the argument is finished, because we ask three questions of every idea and one of them is where it came from. Nothing in the argument rests on that section. Each passage gets its interpretation before its application. The Old Testament is quoted from Brenton’s translation of the Septuagint and the New Testament from the King James Version. Stated as a syllogism, the case runs as follows.

What we defend

Winger’s third term is the right place to start. A view so broad that every Christian holds it settles nothing, and a view that can be bent toward its opposite has not been stated yet. So we state ours as four claims, and each one is meant to be denied by someone.

Rulers hold their office under Christ. The risen Christ has been given all power in heaven and in earth, and rulers owe him acknowledgment in their office, not only in their private lives.

Rulers judge by his written word. The good the magistrate praises and the evil he punishes are what God’s law calls good and evil, as Scripture gives it, not what nature alone can teach or a majority wills.

The sword reaches public acts against God. The magistrate restrains attacks on the worship of God, public blasphemy and public idolatry, as he restrains theft and fraud. By public blasphemy we mean speech or display, in public, that reproaches the name of God or of Christ. By public idolatry we mean the public worship of any god but the Lord, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. He does not punish belief, and he does not search the conscience. Prudence governs how and when he restrains, and he may bear for a time with what he cannot yet remove without greater harm. He may not call it a right.

Rulers are the church’s nursing-fathers. They protect its worship and its ministers, and they may support them from public revenue. They do not preach, administer the sacraments, or define doctrine.

Scripture names nations and their rulers together, “the nations and the kings which will not serve thee” (Isa. 60:12). A people serves Christ in its own stations, and its rulers serve him in theirs. This paper is about the rulers, because that is where the dispute lies. A nation is Christian, in the sense we defend, when its people serve Christ and its rulers do these four things. Not every Christian thinks so. The Baptist Faith and Message (2000), the confession of the Southern Baptist Convention, holds that the state owes every church the same freedom and favors no denomination, that it may not interfere with the spreading of religious opinion, and that it has “no right to impose taxes for the support of any form of religion” (Art. XVII). Walker, writing from that confession, denies the state any authority from Scripture to enforce religion. Our third and fourth claims contradict both. A reader who holds that rulers must treat every religion alike cannot hold our view, so it cannot be stretched into the view it opposes.

We also part with Wolfe, in three places.

The ground. Wolfe rests the magistrate’s duty to religion on nature, with revelation filling in what nature leaves out. Nature teaches that God is and that he is to be worshiped, “even his eternal power and Godhead” (Rom. 1:20). It does not teach that Jesus is Lord, and a duty grounded only in nature can require no more than a general belief in God. We rest the duty on what Scripture commands rulers to do about the Lord’s Christ.

The source of authority. Reformed Christian Politics holds that the prince receives his powers to govern from the people, who set the limits of what he may do (199). Paul says there is “no power but of God” (Rom. 13:1), and Christ told Pilate his power was “given thee from above” (John 19:11). A duty the people granted, the people can take back. Our paper None Gives What He Has Not answers that premise in full.

Revolution. Wolfe defends a right of revolution against tyranny, even by a Christian minority (The Case for Christian Nationalism, 345, 350, as quoted by James Clark, North American Anglican, 2022). We deny it. Paul’s rule is that “Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God” (Rom. 13:2), and our paper Who Shall Judge? sets out the case. Nothing in this paper asks a Christian to change who rules. It asks him to tell rulers what Christ requires of them.

The King the rulers serve

Psalm 2 opens with rulers in council. “The kings of the earth stood up, and the rulers gathered themselves together, against the Lord, and against his Christ; saying, Let us break through their bonds, and cast away their yoke from us” (Ps. 2:2–3). God answers from heaven with a King: “But I have been made king by him on Sion his holy mountain, declaring the ordinance of the Lord: the Lord said to me, Thou art my Son, to-day have I begotten thee” (Ps. 2:6–7). The King receives “the heathen for thine inheritance, and the ends of the earth for thy possession” (Ps. 2:8). Then the psalm turns to the rulers who rose against him: “Now therefore understand, ye kings: be instructed, all ye that judge the earth. Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice in him with trembling” (Ps. 2:10–11).

Whom it addresses. The psalm speaks to “ye kings” and to “all ye that judge the earth,” the rulers of the nations named by their office. They are not the anointed King, who speaks in verse 6. Their offense in verses 2 and 3 is an act of rulers in council, a decision to throw off the rule of the Lord and his Christ, and the command in verses 10 and 11 is the opposite act, addressed to the same men in the same capacity. A command to kings as kings is a command about what they do as kings.

When it applies. The apostles read the psalm as fulfilled in their own day. When the council threatened them, they prayed its first verses and named the rulers: “For of a truth against thy holy child Jesus, whom thou hast anointed, both Herod, and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles, and the people of Israel, were gathered together” (Acts 4:27). Paul read verse 7 of the resurrection: God “hath raised up Jesus again; as it is also written in the second psalm, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee” (Acts 13:33). The rod of verse 9 belongs to the risen Christ, who “was to rule all nations with a rod of iron” (Rev. 12:5). The King of verse 6 reigns now, so the “now therefore” of verse 10 is addressed to rulers who live under his reign. Christ said as much after the resurrection, “All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth” (Matt. 28:18), and John calls him “the prince of the kings of the earth” (Rev. 1:5).

What it commands. The kings rose “against the Lord, and against his Christ” together, and the bonds they meant to break are called “their bonds,” the Lord’s and his Christ’s (Ps. 2:2–3). The remedy is to take up the bonds they tried to break. “Serve the Lord with fear” is not advice about private devotion given to men who happen to be kings. It answers a policy, and it is a positive command. In Acts 4 the rebellion of verse 2 was persecution, and a neutral ruler is not a persecutor. He has still not done what verse 11 commands, because a ruler does not serve the Lord by declining to oppose him. The psalm closes on the ruler’s course: “Accept correction, lest at any time the Lord be angry, and ye should perish from the righteous way” (Ps. 2:12).

The application. A ruler serves Christ in his office, and his personal faith does not discharge the command if his office still treats Christ as one claimant among many. The psalm commands the service and does not prescribe its forms. The form Scripture records is a ruler’s public decree acknowledging God (section 05), and its plain equivalents now are the oath a ruler takes, the stated foundation of the law he administers, and the measure of good and evil he enforces. Those three are our application of the psalm, not words of it. This is the first claim of section 02, and the others depend on it.

The minister of God

Paul says three things about the magistrate in Romans 13 that bear on the question. His power is from God: “For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God” (Rom. 13:1). He serves God: “he is the minister of God to thee for good,” and again, “he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil” (Rom. 13:4). And he is paid for that service, “for they are God’s ministers, attending continually upon this very thing” (Rom. 13:6).

Whose good and evil. A minister carries out his master’s will, not his own. Paul has just told Christians to “prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God” (Rom. 12:2), to “Abhor that which is evil; cleave to that which is good” (Rom. 12:9), and to “overcome evil with good” (Rom. 12:21). The words good and evil run straight from chapter 12 into chapter 13, and in chapter 12 they mean what the will of God calls good and evil. The standard carries over. The reach does not, since love reaches the heart and a sword cannot. The magistrate who is God’s minister punishes evil by God’s standard. He does not define it, and neither do the people who live under him.

The hard verse. The strongest textual objection to our view sits five verses later. Paul sums up the law in commandments of the second table, “Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet,” all of them “briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” (Rom. 13:9), and he adds, “Love worketh no ill to his neighbour” (Rom. 13:10). Read as a boundary, these verses would mark the edge of the sword, so that the magistrate punishes wrongs against men and leaves wrongs against God alone. The list cannot bear that reading, because it ends with coveting, which lives in the heart, and no magistrate can punish what he cannot see. Paul is not drawing the sword’s boundary in verse 9. He has changed the subject at verse 8, from what the ruler does with the sword to what every Christian owes his neighbor: “Owe no man any thing, but to love one another” (Rom. 13:8). Verses 9 and 10 describe the debts of love, not the jurisdiction of the sword, and they say nothing either way about the first table and the sword.

What Romans 13 leaves open. We grant what the chapter does not say. Paul does not list offenses against God among the evils the sword punishes, and he does not exclude them. Romans 13 sets the standard, evil as the will of God defines it, and leaves the scope of the sword open. By itself it does not prove our third claim, and we do not rest that claim on it.

The application. The magistrate measures evil by the law of God, not by his own will or the will of the people. Verse 9 shows one limit in passing. The law it quotes forbids coveting, and no sword can reach the heart, so belief and the hidden worship of the heart lie outside the sword. Whether the sword reaches public acts against God is a question for the texts that speak to rulers, the second psalm and the kings of section 05.

Kings outside Sinai

Meredith Kline gave the modern form of the usual answer to the kings of Judah, that they ruled a theocracy, and section 07 takes it up. This section sets the kings of Judah aside and looks only at rulers who never stood under the law of Moses. They lived under the covenant with Noah, which gave the sword for blood: “He that sheds man’s blood, instead of that blood shall his own be shed, for in the image of God I made man” (Gen. 9:6). Scripture records God answering a whole city, judging one king, and approving what another did, all over the worship of God.

Nineveh. When Jonah preached, “the men of Nineve believed God, and proclaimed a fast” (Jonah 3:5). Then “the word reached the king of Nineve, and he arose from off his throne, and took off his raiment from him, and put on sackcloth” (Jonah 3:6), and “it was commanded in Nineve by the king and by his great men” that the city fast (Jonah 3:7). The city “cried earnestly to God,” and turned from “the iniquity that was in their hands” (Jonah 3:8). God answered the city: “And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil ways; and God repented of the evil which he had said he would do to them; and he did it not” (Jonah 3:10). Christ held it up against his own generation: “The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: because they repented at the preaching of Jonas” (Matt. 12:41). The people repented first, and the king put his throne behind their repentance by public decree. The sin Jonah names is the iniquity of their hands, not idolatry, so the case shows less than the ones that follow. It shows that God accepted a public turning to him that a Gentile ruler led from the throne.

Babylon. God humbled Nebuchadnezzar for a stated purpose, “that the living may know that the Lord is most high over the kingdom of men” (Dan. 4:17). When the king’s reason returned, he did not keep the lesson to himself. He wrote “to all nations, tribes, and tongues, who dwell in all the earth” (Dan. 4:1) that the most high God’s “kingdom is an everlasting kingdom” (Dan. 4:3), and he closed, “Now therefore I Nabuchodonosor praise and greatly exalt and glorify the King of heaven” (Dan. 4:37). God set a Gentile king a public lesson, and the king answered it in public. His son Belshazzar did the opposite at a state feast. Daniel charged him that “they have brought before thee the vessels of his house, and thou, and thy nobles, and thy mistresses, and thy concubines, have drunk wine out of them,” that he had “praised the gods of gold, and silver, and brass, and iron, and wood, and stone,” and that “the God in whose hand are thy breath and all thy ways hast thou not glorified” (Dan. 5:23). The sentence fell on the kingdom, not on the king’s soul alone: “God has measured thy kingdom, and finished it” (Dan. 5:26). “In the same night was Baltasar the Chaldean king slain” (Dan. 5:30). Belshazzar was judged for his own act as king at a feast of state, not for allowing the worship of others. The case shows what a ruler answers for in his own office.

Persia. “The Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of the Persians,” and Cyrus proclaimed that God “has given me a charge to build him a house in Jerusalem” (Ezra 1:1–2). Isaiah had already called him “my anointed Cyrus” (Isa. 45:1), and added, “thou hast not known me” (Isa. 45:4). God used Cyrus before Cyrus knew him, which is providence, and we rest nothing on it. A later Darius paid for the worship of the rebuilt house “out of the king’s property, even the tributes beyond the river,” so “that they may offer sweet savours to the God of heaven, and that they may pray for the life of the king and his sons” (Ezra 6:8, 10), and he decreed death for any man who altered the order (Ezra 6:11). Artaxerxes gave from “the king’s treasure-houses” (Ezra 7:20), freed the priests, Levites and ministers of the house of God from tribute (Ezra 7:24), and gave his reason: “take heed lest any one make an attack on the house of the God of heaven, lest at any time there should be wrath against the realm of the king and his sons” (Ezra 7:23). He had Ezra appoint judges for the people of the province who knew the law of God, and he set civil penalties on “whosoever shall not do the law of God, and the law of the king” (Ezra 7:26). His decree reached those who knew that law, not every people in his empire, and we do not stretch it further. Scripture gives its own verdict in the next verse: “Blessed be the Lord God of our fathers, who has put it thus into the heart of the king, to glorify the house of the Lord which is in Jerusalem” (Ezra 7:27).

What the cases show. None of these rulers was Israel’s king, and the law of Moses commanded none of them anything. Scripture does not approve every royal decree it records. Nebuchadnezzar’s golden image (Dan. 3:5–6) and the ban on prayer that Darius signed (Dan. 6:8–10) were decrees the faithful refused, and God vindicated them. So we rest the argument only where Scripture gives its own verdict: Nineveh spared (Jonah 3:10), Nebuchadnezzar’s decree answering the purpose God stated for humbling him (Dan. 4:17), Belshazzar’s kingdom finished (Dan. 5:26), and God blessed for what he put into the heart of Artaxerxes (Ezra 7:27). Two things follow. The covenant with Noah did not confine these rulers to dealings between men, because God judged one and approved another for their dealings with his worship while they lived under it. And the duty they kept or broke did not come from Israel’s covenant, so it did not end when that covenant did.

The application. A ruler outside Israel answers to God for what his office does about God’s worship, as Belshazzar did. Psalm 2 commands him to serve, and these cases show what Scripture approves when a ruler does. He may honor God by public decree, as Nebuchadnezzar did. He keeps the worship of God from attack, as Darius did with a penalty and Artaxerxes by command (Ezra 6:11, 7:23). He provides for the worship God commands and protects its ministers, as Artaxerxes did. And he does it by God’s standard, not his own. Artaxerxes’ rule was “Let whatever is in the decree of the God of heaven, be done” (Ezra 7:23).

Nursing-fathers

Isaiah promised the people of God kings for their servants: “And kings shall be thy nursing-fathers, and their princesses thy nurses, they shall bow down to thee on the face of the earth, and shall lick the dust of thy feet” (Isa. 49:23). The question for any reader is when the promise applies, and the apostles answer it from the same oracle.

When it applies. The chapter opens with the Servant, whom God gives “for a light of the Gentiles, that thou shouldest be for salvation to the end of the earth” (Isa. 49:6). Simeon held the infant Christ and called him “A light to lighten the Gentiles” (Luke 2:32). Paul and Barnabas, turning from the synagogue at Antioch to the Gentiles, called the verse their own commission: “For so hath the Lord commanded us, saying, I have set thee to be a light of the Gentiles” (Acts 13:47). Two verses later Isaiah gives the time, “In an acceptable time have I heard thee, and in a day of salvation have I succoured thee” (Isa. 49:8), and Paul names it: “behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Cor. 6:2). Between the two, Isaiah promises that “kings shall behold him, and princes shall arise, and shall worship him” (Isa. 49:7). The apostles place the Servant, his light to the Gentiles and his day of salvation in the present age, and the kings of verses 7 and 23 belong to the same oracle.

Whom it addresses. The promise is made to Sion, and the apostles read the Sion of these chapters as the church. Paul quotes the opening of Isaiah 54, from the same run of oracles, of “Jerusalem which is above,” which “is the mother of us all” (Gal. 4:26–27), and Hebrews tells believers, “ye are come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem” (Heb. 12:22). The heavenly Jerusalem has children on earth, for Paul writes to the churches of Galatia, “Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of promise” (Gal. 4:28). The children the nations carry home are Sion’s children (Isa. 49:22), and the kings serve their mother.

What a nursing-father does. Moses used the same image, and in the Greek the same word, when the people grew too heavy for him. He asked whether he had begotten them, that God should tell him, “Take them into thy bosom, as a nurse would take her suckling” (Num. 11:12). A nursing-father carries what cannot carry itself, feeds it, and keeps it from harm. Isaiah uses the same picture in the verse before the promise, where the nations “shall bring thy sons in their bosom, and shall bear thy daughters on their shoulders” (Isa. 49:22). The kings also “bow down to thee” and “lick the dust of thy feet” (Isa. 49:23). Both are figures, since no king suckles a child and none licks dust, and we read them the same way. The first stands for care and provision, the second for honor. The kings serve the church and do not rule its faith. Isaiah returns to the promise in chapter 60, where “kings shall walk in thy light” (Isa. 60:3), “their kings shall wait upon thee” (Isa. 60:10), and Sion “shalt eat the wealth of kings” (Isa. 60:16), with a warning attached: “For the nations and the kings which will not serve thee shall perish” (Isa. 60:12). John saw the end of that road, where “the kings of the earth do bring their glory and honour into it” (Rev. 21:24).

The application. Scripture has already shown what a nursing-father’s work looks like, in the Persian kings of section 05, who did it before Christ came. He keeps the church’s worship and its ministers from attack. He may support them from public revenue, as Darius and Artaxerxes did, and free its ministers from tribute. He honors the church and bows to the word it keeps. He does not take its pulpit, its sacraments or its doctrine. When King Uzziah went into the temple to burn incense, the priests told him, “It is not for thee, Ozias, to burn incense to the Lord, but only for the priests the sons of Aaron” (2 Chron. 26:18). The object of his care has changed since Artaxerxes. The house of God is now “the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15), and the nursing-father’s care goes to it.

An objection from the last things. An oracle can divide between the two comings of Christ. When Christ read Isaiah 61 at Nazareth, he stopped at “To preach the acceptable year of the Lord” (Luke 4:19) and left the day of recompence that follows in the same verse. So a reader may hold that Isaiah 49:23 waits for Christ’s return while verses 6 and 8 are fulfilled now. The text gives him little room. Verse 22 describes the nations carrying Sion’s children home, which is the gathering of the Gentiles the apostles said had begun, and verse 23 names what the kings do while that gathering goes on. Nor is the work of a nursing-father reserved for the age to come, since the kings of Persia did it before Christ came. Our argument does not depend on a view of the millennium. It depends on the apostles’ reading of this chapter.

Was Israel a type?

The strongest objection to everything above is the one Meredith Kline put in its modern form, that Israel was a type. Israel’s theocracy, he held, pictured the age to come and was no pattern for the nations, and the picture ended when what it pictured came. We answer it from the New Testament’s own account of what ended.

What the New Testament says passed away. It names the sacrifices: “For the law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect” (Heb. 10:1). It names the first covenant’s order as a whole, which is “ready to vanish away” (Heb. 8:13). It names the food laws, since what enters a man from without “cannot defile him” (Mark 7:18), and the holydays, new moons and sabbath days, “Which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ” (Col. 2:16–17). The covenant that passed away is the one made at Sinai, and the duties of section 05 did not come from it, because the kings who kept them never stood under it.

What it addresses to rulers. Where the New Testament speaks to rulers, it does not treat their duty as a shadow. It reads the second psalm of Herod and Pilate (Acts 4:25–27), and it calls the magistrate of pagan Rome “the minister of God” (Rom. 13:4).

What was never a type. Nineveh, Babylon and Persia were not Israel and did not picture the kingdom. The duties God judged and approved in their kings did not come from the theocracy, so they did not end with it.

What changed. The object of the duty changed. The Persian kings protected the worship God then commanded, which was the worship of the temple, and their acts were good because the worship was God’s, not because they stood under Moses. When the worship God commands changed, the object changed with it. Isaiah 49:23 names the new object, the church of the gathered Gentiles (section 06), and Paul calls the church “the house of God” (1 Tim. 3:15), built “for an habitation of God through the Spirit” (Eph. 2:22).

What it requires of rulers

Winger asked for application, and the four claims of section 02 come down to particular duties and particular limits. For a ruler today they require the following, and each rests on the sections named.

He acknowledges Christ in his office. He takes his oath in Christ’s name, and the law he administers names Christ as its foundation and measures good and evil by his word. Nebuchadnezzar’s decree is the pattern Scripture approves, and the oath and the stated foundation of the law are our application of it (sections 03 and 05).

He restrains public acts against God. He keeps the worship of God from attack, as Darius and Artaxerxes did. He does not permit public blasphemy or the public worship of other gods, as he does not permit public fraud, and he uses prudence in how and when he restrains them. He punishes no man for what he believes. The first of these rests on Ezra 6:11 and 7:23. The second rests on the command of Psalm 2 and the standard of Romans 13, and it is the most inferential step in this paper (sections 03 to 05).

He protects the church. He keeps its worship and its ministers from attack and disruption, and he may support them from public revenue and free its ministers from tribute, as Darius and Artaxerxes did (sections 05 and 06).

He keeps to his office. He does not preach, administer the sacraments, or define doctrine. He protects “whatever is in the decree of the God of heaven” (Ezra 7:23), which he learns from the Scriptures and their teachers, not from his own will or a vote. He judges for his own acts and answers to God for them, as every judge does, and he does not make doctrine for the church (section 06).

This is a particular view. It contradicts Article XVII of the Baptist Faith and Message on public support for religion and on the state’s equal treatment of every church. It is not the confession that Jesus is Lord restated, because a Christian can confess that Jesus is Lord and still deny all four duties.

What we do

Each session of our series ends with what a man does about what he has learned, in four places: himself, his home, his church, and what he asks of rulers. The argument comes down to these.

He serves Christ in whatever post he holds. A man who holds an appointed office, runs a business or leads a crew holds his post under the same King the psalm names, and he does his work “in the name of the Lord Jesus” (Col. 3:17).

He teaches his house the decrees of the kings. He reads his children the second psalm, Nebuchadnezzar’s letter to the nations and Artaxerxes’ decree, so that they learn early what rulers owe Christ and what God thinks of the rulers who give it.

He asks his church to pray as the exiles prayed. The returned exiles offered sacrifice and prayed “for the life of the king and his sons” (Ezra 6:10), and Paul commands prayer “For kings, and for all that are in authority” (1 Tim. 2:2). He asks his elders to pray for rulers by name and to teach what Scripture says rulers owe Christ.

He tells rulers what they owe. He speaks to rulers from Scripture, by letter, petition and public testimony, and tells them that they hold their office under Christ and will answer to him: “Now therefore understand, ye kings: be instructed, all ye that judge the earth” (Ps. 2:10). He asks them to acknowledge Christ in law, to restrain public blasphemy, and to protect the church. Our paper None Gives What He Has Not explains why we do this by speaking to rulers rather than by electing them.

Nine objections

“Romans 13:9 limits the sword to the second table.” Section 04 answers it, and the next verse with it. The list ends with coveting, which no sword can reach, so verses 9 and 10 describe what love owes, not what the sword punishes.

“The psalm commands rulers to believe, not to rule differently.” The psalm addresses rulers by their office, “all ye that judge the earth” (Ps. 2:10), and answers what they did in council, a policy of casting off the Lord’s yoke. A private faith that leaves the policy standing has not obeyed it. Nebuchadnezzar did not keep his lesson private. He wrote it “to all nations, tribes, and tongues, who dwell in all the earth” (Dan. 4:1).

“My kingdom is not of this world.” Christ said where his kingdom comes from and how it advances: “if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight … but now is my kingdom not from hence” (John 18:36). His servants do not bring it in by the sword. Before the same judge he said where the judge’s own power came from: “Thou couldest have no power at all against me, except it were given thee from above” (John 19:11). A kingdom that does not come from this world still rules the powers of this world.

“Render unto Cæsar.” Christ asked whose image was on the coin and answered, “Render therefore unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s” (Matt. 22:21). The verse sets two debts side by side, and it does not put Cæsar outside the second. Paul gives the reason tribute is owed to rulers at all, “for they are God’s ministers” (Rom. 13:6).

“The apostles never asked Cæsar to establish Christianity.” They held no office from which to ask it, and they did what Scripture gives a subject to do. They prayed for kings (1 Tim. 2:1–2), and they preached to rulers for their conversion. Paul reasoned with Felix “of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come” (Acts 24:25), and he told Agrippa, “I would to God, that not only thou, but also all that hear me this day, were both almost, and altogether such as I am” (Acts 26:29). What a converted ruler owes in his office stands in the psalm the apostles prayed (Acts 4:25–26), addressed to “all ye that judge the earth” (Ps. 2:10). Their silence before pagan emperors describes their situation. It does not define a Christian ruler’s duty.

“Where the New Testament instructs officials, the duties are second-table only.” John told the publicans, “Exact no more than that which is appointed you,” and the soldiers, “Do violence to no man” (Luke 3:13–14). He answered men who asked what they should do in their trades, and those were the sins of their trades. Peter says governors are sent “for the punishment of evildoers” (1 Pet. 2:14), which leaves the scope open as Romans 13 does. The New Testament’s word to rulers about the Lord and his Christ is the psalm it quotes in Acts 4.

“The parable of the tares forbids it.” The householder tells his servants, “Let both grow together until the harvest” (Matt. 13:30), and Christ explains that “The field is the world” and “the tares are the children of the wicked one” (Matt. 13:38). The tares are the wicked, all of them. If the parable forbade the magistrate to punish public blasphemy, it would forbid him to punish murder too, and Romans 13 gives him the sword for that. The parable forbids men to attempt the final separation, which belongs to the angels at the end of the world (Matt. 13:39–41). It does not take the sword from the minister of God.

“God’s covenant with Noah defines the magistrate’s calling.” Walker holds that Genesis 8 and 9, not Genesis 1 and 2, set the conditions for government’s calling. We agree that the sword was given there (Gen. 9:6). The covenant gives the sword for blood. It does not say the sword may be used for nothing else, and the rulers of section 05 lived under that covenant. God judged Belshazzar for what he did about God’s worship (Dan. 5:23), and Scripture blesses God for what Artaxerxes did (Ezra 7:27).

“Then the state will decide which church is true.” The magistrate judges what he protects, as he judges every crime he punishes, and he judges it by a standard he did not write. Artaxerxes protected “whatever is in the decree of the God of heaven” (Ezra 7:23), and he sent “Esdras, the scribe of the law of the Lord God of heaven” (Ezra 7:12) to teach it. He did not define the law, and a Christian ruler does not define doctrine either. A ruler can judge wrongly, as judges have hanged innocent men, and no one concludes from that that the magistrate may not judge murder. Our paper All the Gods of the Heathen answers the objection from fallibility at length (section 09).

Where the other view came from

Winger set history aside, and nothing above depends on this section. We ask three questions of every idea: where it came from, what truth has been twisted to produce it, and where it leads. The view this paper answers, that a ruler, as ruler, must treat the worship of Christ and every other worship alike, has a history, and our papers All the Gods of the Heathen and One Kingdom, Not Two trace it in full. The steps are these.

Each step began from a truth. Faith cannot be compelled, and the apostles said, “we persuade men” (2 Cor. 5:11). Christ’s kingdom does not come by the sword (John 18:36). The offices are distinct, and the king does not burn incense (2 Chron. 26:18). Each of these truths limits what a ruler does for God. None of them says that a ruler must treat the worship of Christ and every other alike, and that is where the steps arrived.

A ruler who may favor no worship has to protect every worship alike, and Scripture names what the other worships are: “For all the gods of the heathen are devils: but the Lord made the heavens” (Ps. 95:5). Our paper All the Gods of the Heathen takes that up at length. The second psalm commands rulers to serve the Lord, and a ruler who must hold every worship equal cannot obey it in his office.

Where the argument stops

The limits of the argument should be as plain as its conclusion.

It does not compel belief. The sword reaches public acts, and no ruler can make a man believe. The apostles persuaded men, and the church still does.

It does not give rulers the pulpit. The ruler protects the church’s worship. He does not preach, administer the sacraments or define doctrine (section 06).

It does not argue for any penalty. Restraint means the ruler forbids the public act and enforces the prohibition as he enforces other laws. The Persian decrees of section 05 carried Persian penalties, death among them, and we cite them for what they protected, not for how they punished. The argument stands on what Scripture laid on rulers outside Israel’s covenant, and it does not settle which penalties of the law of Moses, if any, a ruler may adopt.

It does not counsel resistance. The American government is the power that is, and the Christian owes it obedience, taxes and honor (None Gives What He Has Not, section 11). We reject Wolfe’s right of revolution (section 02).

It does not depend on a view of the millennium. It depends on the apostles’ reading of Isaiah 49 (section 06).

It does not claim that America was a Christian nation. It says what rulers owe, not what any nation has done.

It does not settle every question of establishment. It holds that the ruler protects the worship God commands and judges it by Scripture. Which church bodies he recognizes, and how, is a further question, and One Kingdom, Not Two explains why the people cannot be the ones who draw that line (section 07).

It does not judge the faith of the men it answers. Winger, Walker and Wolfe confess Christ. The dispute is over what Scripture requires of rulers.

It stands or falls on two premises. If Scripture lays no duty toward the worship of God on rulers outside Israel’s covenant, the first three claims fail, and sections 03 and 05 answer that premise with the second psalm, Nineveh, Babylon and Persia. If the promise of nursing-fathers does not belong to the present age, the fourth claim fails, and section 06 answers that premise from the apostles’ reading of Isaiah 49. A reader who rejects the conclusion should reject it at one of those two places.

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Texts and editions

Sir Lancelot C. L. Brenton, trans., The Septuagint Version of the Old Testament (London, 1844), with its numbering.

The Holy Bible, King James Version (1611), for the New Testament.

Mike Winger, post on X, 27 October 2026, x.com/MikeWingerii/status/2115143972498837696.

Stephen Wolfe, The Case for Christian Nationalism (Moscow, Idaho: Canon Press, 2022), 9, as quoted in “The Case for Christian Nationalism: A Review,” Gentle Reformation, 3 January 2024, and 345, 350, as quoted by James Clark, North American Anglican, 30 November 2022.

Stephen Wolfe, Zachary Garris and Sean McGowan, Reformed Christian Politics (2026), 199–200, reformedchristianpolitics.org.

Andrew T. Walker, “Book Review: The Case for Christian Nationalism, by Stephen Wolfe,” 9Marks, 9 December 2022.

The Baptist Faith and Message (2000), Art. XVII, bfm.sbc.net.

Thomas Helwys, A Short Declaration of the Mystery of Iniquity (1612).

Roger Williams, The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution (1644).

John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689), trans. William Popple.

The Westminster Confession of Faith (1647), 23.3, in Philip Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom, vol. 3 (New York, 1877), and the American revision of 23.3 (1788), text of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.

Meredith G. Kline, “The Relevance of the Theocracy,” The Presbyterian Guardian, 16 February 1953.

None Gives What He Has Not. One Kingdom, Not Two. All the Gods of the Heathen. Who Shall Judge?

Published by Beyond Left and Right. Old Testament from Brenton’s Septuagint with its numbering (Daniel follows the Greek, so Daniel 6:27 is King James 6:26, Psalm 95 is King James Psalm 96, and Ezra is part of Brenton’s 2 Esdras). New Testament from the King James Version. The argument in sections 03 through 08 rests on Scripture alone, and history appears only in section 11. Modern authors are quoted briefly and paraphrased otherwise. Correspondence: contact@beyondleftandright.com