Let Your Yea Be Yea

Whether a voter’s motive decides what his vote means

Tell a Christian that his vote claims a power the people do not have, and he will often answer that he meant nothing of the kind. He votes for good laws, out of love for his neighbors, and his hope is in the Lord. Wayne Grudem gave a version of that answer to John Piper in 2020. It rests on a claim our earlier papers answered only in passing, that a voter’s motive decides what his vote means. This paper argues that motive decides whether a lawful act is done well, and that it cannot decide what an act means.

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The question

None Gives What He Has Not argues that the American vote claims to confer a power no people has to give. Better Than the Alternative argues that a vote helps a man into office and shares in the wrongs the voter knows he brings. Both judge the vote by what it means and does, not by what the voter hopes. The usual reply rejects that.

John Piper wrote that supporting either candidate would contradict his calling, and, in words Grudem quotes, that Christians “communicate a falsehood to unbelievers” when they put policies above character. Grudem answered that “Supporting Trump for his good policies while criticizing his flaws” does not compromise a Christian’s witness. A Christian, he wrote, can explain that he seeks good government “not from base motives but because of Jesus’ command to love our neighbors as ourselves.” On that view a vote communicates what the voter says it means.

We grant at once that motive matters. A man who stays home because he wants the whole order to burn has not done well by staying home, and we abstain in part because our hope is in the Lord. The question is which way motive works, and whether it reaches what an act means. Stated as a syllogism, the case runs as follows.

What motive can do

Aquinas set out the old rule. A human act is good simply only when it is good in every way, in what is done, in its circumstances and in its end, since, as he quotes Dionysius, “evil results from any single defect, but good from the complete cause” (Summa Theologiae I-II q.18 a.4). The end can add to what an act is. A man who steals in order to commit adultery is, as Aquinas quotes Aristotle, “more adulterer than thief” (a.6). The end cannot take away what the act already is. He is still a thief.

Christ said the same of alms. Alms done “to be seen of them” have no reward (Matt. 6:1). Paul gave the other half, that those who do evil that good may come are justly damned (Rom. 3:8). Motive can ruin a good act and cannot repair a bad one.

So the man who abstains to see the order burn sins, and the man who abstains because his hope is in the Lord does not. But hope is not why the vote is forbidden. If it were, the voter would answer with his own hope, as Grudem answers with his love of neighbor, and two men would be left comparing hearts only God can see. Abstaining rests on what the vote means, and hope is the motive that ought to go with it.

Who decides what an act means

A public act is a sign, and a sign belongs to the order that made it. No man signs a deed and means a lease, or swears an oath and means a wish. In 250 the emperor Decius ordered the people of the empire to sacrifice to the gods, and those who did received a certificate saying so. Some Christians bought the certificate without offering the sacrifice. They kept their faith in private and escaped the penalty. Cyprian of Carthage still counted them among the fallen: “That profession of one who denies is the testimony of a Christian disowning what he had been. He says that he has done what another has actually committed” (On the Lapsed §27).

The certificate holder wanted the magistrate to count him as one who had sacrificed, and he did not mean to deny Christ. Cyprian judged him by what the certificate said. A voter stands in the same place. He wants his ballot counted as a vote, and the order says what a vote is. Its Constitution opens with “We the People of the United States” ordaining it, and Madison defined a republic as a government “which derives all its powers directly or indirectly from the great body of the people” (Federalist No. 39). The ballot has no line for reasons. The voter may tell his friends that he dislikes the man and wants his policies, and the ballot records only the man’s name for the office. By the order’s account, the voter has given that man his powers.

The order’s account is false, and that is the point. The people do not have the sword to give, and “there is no power but of God” (Rom. 13:1). God gives the kingdom “to whomsoever he shall please” (Dan. 4:17), so whoever holds the office holds it from God and is owed obedience. The election names the man, and God gives the power. The vote still professes that the people gave it, as the incense professed that Caesar was a god. The incense made no one a god, and the martyrs still would not burn it.

What it twists and where it leads

The idea is built from a truth. God “looks at the heart” (1 Kingdoms 16:7), and he judges it. Cyprian said as much in the same chapter: God “will judge not alone of our deeds, but even of our words and thoughts.” The twist turns God’s sight of the heart into the heart’s power to rename what the hand did.

Followed through, the idea empties every public act. If private meaning decides what a man did, no oath binds him and no confession commits him, since he can always say he meant something else. James asked for words that mean what they say: “let your yea be yea; and your nay, nay” (James 5:12). And no vote can ever be judged wrong, since any vote can come with a statement that the voter disapproves of the man.

What we do

Each session of our series ends with what a man does himself, at home, in church and before rulers.

He judges his acts by what they mean. Good reasons do not make an act lawful.

He teaches his sons that words and acts mean what they say. He keeps his own promises as he gave them.

He asks his church to say what the vote means before it says why to cast one.

He tells rulers where their power came from. It came from God, not from the ballot.

Three objections

“I vote for peace, not to confer authority.” Grudem’s version is a vote for good government out of love for neighbors. Peace is a lawful end, and Scripture names its means. Paul commands prayer “for kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life” (1 Tim. 2:2), and Jeremiah told the exiles to seek the peace of the land and “pray to the Lord for the people” (Jer. 36:7). A lawful end does not make a means lawful (Rom. 3:8). If the man is one the voter has judged unfit, Better Than the Alternative answers him on that ground too.

“I am a monarchist. My vote only designates.” Leo XIII taught that rulers “may in certain cases be chosen by the will and decision of the multitude,” and that “by this choice, in truth, the ruler is designated, but the rights of ruling are not thereby conferred” (Diuturnum Illud §6). Section 03 agrees that this is what an election does before God. The objection mistakes what the act does for what it professes. Leo himself rejected the claim “that all power comes from the people” (§5), though he did not draw our conclusion from it, and that claim is what the American vote professes. The monarchist who votes holds Leo’s account and performs Madison’s, like Cyprian’s certificate holder, who believed one thing and signed another.

“What if the great man is on the ballot?” Suppose a candidate meets every measure we hold and promises, once elected, to burn the Constitution and end rule by the people’s grant. On our measures he cannot meet every one. He asks the people for what he says they do not have, so his authority would rest on the claim he means to destroy. And he promises to break the oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution,” while the righteous man “swears to his neighbour, and disappoints him not” (Ps. 14:4). Gideon refused a throne offered by men who credited him with their rescue (Judg. 8:22–23). If the vote is forbidden, no size of good changes that (Rom. 3:8).

If we will not vote for him, the objection runs, he rises on other men’s votes while we keep our hands clean, and a rule that refuses even our best men is a purity spiral. That assumes an election is the only road to a good ruler. When Israel cried out, “the Lord raised up a saviour” (Judg. 3:9). Nor does rejoicing in a good outcome make a man a partner in the sins that brought it. Paul rejoiced that Christ was preached even “in pretence” without preaching in pretence himself (Phil. 1:18). A purity spiral raises the bar every round. This rule sets one bar, what the vote means, the same for the best man and the worst. The test that keeps moving is the lesser-evil comparison.

Where the argument stops

It does not make motive irrelevant. Bad motives spoil lawful acts, abstaining included.

It does not argue at length that the vote is forbidden. It shows that motive cannot settle the question. None Gives and Better Than the Alternative carry the rest.

It does not judge the faith of the men it answers. Grudem and Leo are answered for their words.

It stands or falls on one premise. If private meaning could decide what a public act means, Grudem’s reply would stand, and so would the certificates. Section 03 answers that premise. A reader who rejects the conclusion should reject it there.

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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.

Cyprian of Carthage, On the Lapsed (251) §27, trans. Robert Ernest Wallis, Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 5 (1886).

Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II q.18 a.4, a.6, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, 2nd ed. (1920).

Constitution of the United States (1787), Preamble and Art. II §1. James Madison, The Federalist No. 39 (1788).

Leo XIII, Diuturnum Illud (1881), §§5–6.

Wayne Grudem, “A Respectful Response to My Friend John Piper about Voting for Trump,” waynegrudem.com, October 2020.

Published by Beyond Left and Right. Old Testament from Brenton’s Septuagint with its numbering (1 Kingdoms is 1 Samuel, Psalm 14 is Psalm 15, Jeremiah 36 is Jeremiah 29). New Testament from the King James Version. Piper is quoted as Grudem quotes him. Correspondence: contact@beyondleftandright.com