Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron warned his party conference in October that the country faces “an hour of reckoning”. He was thinking of “a global race” for economic success, in which other countries may achieve greater prosperity to such an extent that the United Kingdom would be left lagging behind. He was using his warning to encourage his followers to continue their support for his economic policies. But did anyone think of an hour of reckoning that lies before us all? We must all die; we must all pass into the presence of God. And we must be sent either to heaven or to hell – according to how we have lived in this world.
Beyond that there will be a universal day of reckoning, the day of judgement, “for we must all appear before the judgement seat of Christ, that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad” (2 Cor 5:10). When we appear before the great Judge, evidence will be led which will demonstrate clearly what kind of people we were – righteous or unrighteous. And that evidence will be perfectly accurate; it will be impossible to refute it. It will include every secret thing – what nobody else saw – and among these secret things will be our thoughts. But the most vital question will be: Did we obey the call to repent and believe the gospel? In other words: Did we turn from the love of sin and begin to live in the fear of God? And did we, recognising ourselves as sinners, look away from every possibility of obtaining salvation through our own works, to trust in Christ Jesus alone as the One whom God the Father sent to be the Saviour of the world?
The lives of those who have attained to government positions will be examined, in particular, as to what they did to promote the true religion. Yet the sad fact is that those leading the main political parties in the UK, and also in Scotland, are instead undermining religion and morality. There is the proposal to redefine marriage to allow the union of two men or two women, although God has said, “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh” (Gen 2:24). God has thus said, for all time, that marriage is between one man and one woman; this definition of marriage ought not to be challenged. Indeed it cannot be challenged without sin. It certainly cannot be changed. To attempt to change it is to treat the Scriptures as irrelevant. (It should be acknowledged that David Cameron, alone among the leaders of the three main UK parties, is not a professed atheist; he does attend church sometimes.) If the Scriptures are considered irrelevant in this and other areas of life, religion is indeed being undermined. And, unless they repent, all who have been engaged in this sinful work will be condemned for it on the great day of reckoning when the world will come to an end.
We are all under obligation to live to the glory of God; to do so ought to be, as the Shorter Catechism reminds us, our chief purpose in life. Those especially who are prominent in public life should be concerned to live to God’s glory. They should feel a responsibility, not only to match the average morality of the people they represent, but to be exemplary in their behaviour.
Of course, like everyone else, they have a duty to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. Indeed Thomas Brooks states that “none [are] fit to rule but such that are rich in grace; such a one will be father of his country. What a world of good may a man do with worldly riches in a parish, in a city, in a nation! But that is nothing to the good that a man may do that is rich in grace. O the sins that he may prevent! O the judgements that he may divert! O the favours and blessings that he may draw down upon the heads and hearts of the people! I presume you forget not what a blessing Moses, Joseph, Job, Nehemiah, Mordecai and Daniel proved to the people among whom they lived; and these were all rich in grace.”1 In other words, they sought to live to the glory of God. By His grace, they did so in a very clear way.
Today Britain is very far from living to God’s glory, and it is altogether unlikely that an ungodly nation would elect a body of legislators who would stand out as rich in grace. Yet, whether a country’s rulers are godly or ungodly, they remain under the authority of God and have a responsibility to promote His glory by passing laws that are consistent with His law.
They have no right to tear up statutes that more or less reflected the Ten Commandments, though that is what has been taking place over many decades in connection with Sabbath legislation – most recently by relaxing the number of hours during which major stores could trade on Sabbaths in England and Wales during the period of the Olympic Games. Every alteration of legislation in a sinful direction is serious, but more serious still is the general ungodliness that has – particularly obviously – permeated the outlook of the last several governments. They have disregarded the general principle which should regulate the activities of every government: to rule to God’s glory.
1Works, Banner of Truth reprint, 1980, vol 3, p 170.
Yet we cannot say that Government ministers and MPs are out of line with those whom they represent. A majority of UK citizens may be willing to profess Christianity on a census form but, for the most part, their religion does not extend far beyond that. It is a sad fact that few of them go to church regularly and, in many cases, the services they do attend are thoroughly unscriptural; in particular, there may be a complete absence of biblical teaching about sin and salvation.
What we see generally, as we look around us, is the sheer godlessness of society; we must conclude that the Lord is saying today that the “people have committed two evils; they have forsaken Me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water” (Jer 2:13). People do not think of God as the source of blessing in every area of life; they do not consider that “every good gift and every perfect gift is from above” (Jas 1:17), from God the Creator. They refuse to accept that our greatest need is to have spiritual blessings – to be reconciled to God, to have a living faith in Christ Jesus, to be sincerely holy and to be prepared for eternity.
Rather, their idea of what is good is to “eat, drink, and be merry”, and they seek these things in broken cisterns – from which everything leaks out. People are looking for increasing affluence – economic growth – but, apart from God’s blessing, it would be unlikely to bring more happiness with it. Whatever happiness there may be in a life lived apart from God, it must inevitably be temporary. True, lasting blessedness, both for time and for eternity can only come from God, for the sake of Christ. May that be powerfully brought home to the consciousness of this generation!
What are God’s people to do in view of the prevailing spiritual desolation? Their first duty is to repent of their personal sins: their carelessness, the weakness of their faith, their lack of prayer and their forgetfulness of the glory of God.
Second, they are to pray. And they are particularly directed to pray “for kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty” (1 Tim 2:2). Which means that, in whatever country they may live, they are to pray that their rulers would maintain order in society, including freedom to worship God. His people are, of course, to ask the Most High to bless their rulers spiritually, so that they would follow Christ and, indeed, become rich in grace. Likewise they must pray that the gospel would be spread throughout the various nations of the world and that the Holy Spirit would powerfully apply it to many souls. Thus, and only thus, will both rulers and ruled be able to live to God’s glory and be prepared for that solemn day of reckoning which lies before us all.