[This is part 9 in a series on allegiance to God alone. See part one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight]

Leaving Egypt Ministries, Obadiah D. Morris

We have already made the point that those who are in Christ are new men and that a changed man, more so than verbal professions of faith, are what really proves that a man is a servant of Christ. We should take this point further and show that these principles apply just as much, if not more, to agents of the state, such as police and soldiers, as they do to anyone else. 

For police are directly involved in violently enforcing the wicked “law” system of the ruling elites. They are the enforcement arm of the people who make “unjust statutes” and “oppressive decrees” (Isa 10:1). They are the ones who serve the ruling elites who “devise iniquity” and “plot evil on their beds” (Micah 2:1). They are the people who come and evict home- and land-owners for the county tax agents and judges who “covet fields and seize them,” who “take away houses [and] deprive a man of his home [and] his inheritance” (Micah 2:2). They are the actual boots of the evil men who rule over humans, the people who see to it that the bogus, arbitrary “laws” of men are carried out with violence. They are part of the political legal system of judges and prosecutors who assure that God’s natural order is turned upside down and substituted with the “laws” of men, where violence is used against the innocent while the evil people avoid justice. They are the people who work with those who “acquit the guilty and condemn the righteous” (Proverbs 17:15), who “plot injustice in [their] hearts [and] spread violence throughout the land” (Psalm 58:2). Along with the judges and prosecutors they work for, police are the people who allow the prophets to observe that “the law is paralyzed, and justice never goes forth. For the wicked hem in the righteous, so that justice is perverted” (Habakkuk 1:4). They are the people who “have practiced extortion and committed robbery,” who “have oppressed the poor and needy and have exploited the foreign resident without justice” (Ezekiel 22:29). They are the people who “shed blood” and “destroy lives for dishonest gain” (Ezekiel 22:27). 

It is impossible to faithfully serve both God and the State. The State is built on aggression and violence against people who have committed no real wrongdoing, their “crimes” often being a failure to comply with the arbitrary decrees of men, violations of which are used to fill the government courthouses and bring money back to Caesar. Followers of the Lord cannot serve the State, for the State is an adversary of God’s kingdom that represents the advancement of human kingdoms. The State is a false god that is set in opposition to the ways and commandments of the Lord.

A true follower of God would reject the evil actions that police officers often carry out as part of their daily duties. Godly people hate wickedness and love righteousness and refuse to participate in the systemic exploitation and injustices that are inherent to human government. The disposition of a Godly man is to oppose these unrighteous practices that “law enforcement” officers regularly engage in. They are people who can say, “I will set no worthless thing before my eyes. I hate the work of those who fall away; it shall not cling to me. A perverse heart shall depart from me; I will know nothing of evil” (Psalm 101:3-4). 

Repenting from statism and service to the State

Those who truly serve the Lord have repented and turned away from the ways of the world. They have walked away from the old lost, confused, or wicked path that they once walked in. A follower of the Lord must actually change their ways, ie., lay down their badge, not merely profess that they are a “Christian” without showing any fruit of the spirit. Professing God’s name as a cover for your evil doings is probably even worse than committing these evil deeds while making no such claim to being a servant of the Lord. Plundering your brothers as a police officer while proclaiming to be a Christian is what taking the Lord’s name in vain is all about. These are the people who “profess to know God, but they deny him by their works” (Titus 1:16). They serve the man-made systems and laws of the state, not the Lord. Though a police officer, ie., a state plunderer, may claim to be a Christian, they are the people who the Lord says “draw near to Me with their mouths and honor Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me. Their worship of Me is but rules taught by men” (Isaiah 29:13).

Those who have truly found the Lord have repented of their old ways, like robbing and kidnapping people because their crimes were called “legal” by the State. Anyone who found the Lord while actively serving Caesar as one of his police officers would quit their jobs and repent; anyone who already knew the Lord beforehand would never become a police officer in the first place. Repenting means actually changing your ways, not merely saying that you know the Lord now. One could never go on pledging an oath to the law systems of men while wishing to serve the Lord. These things are mutually exclusive. Yet, this thinking that one doesn’t need to change is very common. I once called a State Trooper to repent from robbing God’s children, as he was currently doing to me as I drove through one of his traps without a seat belt on, to which he replied, “I’m saved” as he walked away from me. But the Lord does not see anyone’s (eg., a police officer’s) claim of being “saved” as permission to continue in their evils and plunders — that His grace is a license to keep sinning, eg., stealing and killing and calling it “law enforcement.”

“Will you steal and murder, commit adultery and perjury, burn incense to Baal, and follow other gods that you have not known, and then come and stand before Me in this house, which bears My Name, and say, ‘We are delivered, so we can continue with all these abominations’?” (Jeremiah 7:9-10).

Men who truly fear the Lord would hate the evils that are intrinsic to the occupation of enforcing the system of man-made law. “The fear of the LORD is to hate evil” (Proverbs 8:13). They would hate the kingdoms of this world that are built on extorting humans and making them into property of the State. They would see that human government is a demonic plunder system that men need to walk away from entirely. 

It is impossible for a police officer to be a Christian, notwithstanding the person who will inevitably claim that “I know a cop who goes to my church and says he is a Christian.” A Christian is someone who obeys the commands of the Lord, who decidedly calls people away from the authoritarian systems of the world (Mark 10:42-45), and a police officer is someone who obeys the commands of the Caesars of the world, which involves exercising authority over other men as a means of administering social order. Those who have truly repented have left the systems of the world behind in their mind, and have laid down their badges and boots if they found themselves caught up in these evils.