Lux Lucet

Grace Community Church Contra Governor Gavin Newsom

In a statement from John MacArthur and the Elders of Grace Community Church titled “Christ, not Caesar, Is Head of the Church: A Biblical Case for the Church’s Duty to Remain Open,” the authors lay out the reasons Scripture commands churches, not only to remain open in the face of the pandemic, but to reject the various limitations put on public indoor worship by the governors.  The statement is well written, and I encourage everyone to read it.

The heart of the statement is that, “God has established three institutions within human society: the family, the state, and the church” and that, “Each institution has a sphere of authority with jurisdictional limits that must be respected.”  Further, “When any one of the three institutions exceeds the bound of its jurisdiction it is the duty of the other institutions to curtail that overreach.” 

Government, as described in the Bible, is both legitimate and limited.  It is legitimate in that all three forms of government – family, state and church – are established by God.  It is limited in that none of these institutions is sovereign but derives its power from God himself and is thus ministerial not magisterial.  Put a bit more plainly, none of the three forms of government is a law unto itself.  All are subject to the law of God.  And the law of God sets limits on the powers of each.  Fathers are given the power of the rod to punish their children.  Church government is given the power of the keys, that is, the power to preach the Gospel and exercise church discipline.  To civil magistrates is given the power of the sword to punish those who practice evil.

Due to man’s sinfulness, each of these forms of government fail at times.  To paraphrase the Book of Common Prayer, governors in all three institutions both leave undone those things which they ought to do; and do those things which they ought not. 

With respect to the civil magistrates in the present time, they have failed both to punish those who practice evil – and here is meant especially those magistrates who not only have failed to stop, but actually encouraged, acts of lawlessness by Black Lives Matter and Antifa rioters – and to reward the good, and here is meant especially Christians who want nothing other than to worship in accord with what the Bible commands.     

In what to date has been a rare example of Christian courage, Grace Community Church as decided to disobey the order of Governor Newsom and conduct indoor worship services as normal, without limit to the number of those attending, masks or social distancing. 

The County of Los Angeles did not take kindly to this and issued a demand letter requesting that the church “immediately cease holding indoor services or other indoor gatherings, and adhere to the Health Officer Order directives governing activities at houses of worship.’ The letter goes on to threaten, “If you or Grace Community Church continue to hold indoor services in violation of the law, you are subject to criminal and civil liability.”

What are the criminal penalties?  Page 3 of the letter reads, “violating these orders is a crime punishable by a fine of up to $1,000 and imprisonment of up to 90 days. Cal. Health & Safety Code § 120295.”  The letter goes on to say, “Each day that you conduct indoor services is a separate offense.”  The letter does not explain what is meant by “civil liability.”  Perhaps this means “be subject to a civil lawsuit.” 

To whom do these criminal penalties apply?  The letter is addressed to John MacArthur personally, so certainly it applies at least to him. 

The most recent legal ruling concerning Grace Community Church was handed down on August 14, 2020. In this ruling, a California Superior Court judge granted that, for now, the church and continue to meet indoors as long as it observes mask requirements, social distancing and allows county officials on church property to verify compliance. John MacArthur has agreed to these terms for now.

Now there are some Christians, who, at this point, become a bit uncomfortable.  “Doesn’t Romans 13 enjoin Christians to obey the government?” they will ask.  Yes, Romans 13 does require that Christians, “be subject to the governing authorities.”  As Christians, we are not anarchists who believe that all taxation is theft and that the institution of civil government is illegitimate.  Not at all.  We believe that some things belong to Caesar.  But at the same time, we believe that some things, in particular the church of Jesus Christ, belong to God.  Caesar is “God’s minister to you for good.”  But when Caesar commands what is forbidden in Scripture, or forbids what is commanded, he has overstepped his bounds and deserves rebuke from the Word of God, which thoroughly equips the man of God for this good work. 

What About Christians Who Want to Wear a Mask and Socially Distance?

My own opinion of masks is that they are of little or no value in preventing the spread of Covid and that social distancing is likewise a waste of time.  In my opinion, and that of some medical professionals, the best way to stop the spread of Covid-19 is to achieve “herd immunity.” Herd immunity is the resistance to the spread of a contagious disease that results if a sufficiently high proportion of a population is immune to the illness. Some people are still susceptible, but they are surrounded by immune individuals who serve as a barrier, preventing the microbes from reaching them.  Epidemiologists typically estimate that the COVID-19 threshold for herd immunity is around 60 to 70 percent” (“Herd Immunity Here? So Why Are They Feeding the Panic?” Ron Paul Liberty Report, July 2, 2020, accessed 8/16/2020).  That said, not all Christians agree with this approach.  How is the church to respond? 

In the first place, the main argument of this post is that civil government does not have authority over how churches conduct their worship services, and that when governors attempt to assert authority in matters that properly belong to the churches, they overstep their God-given authority.  This is not the same thing as local churches deciding on how they will worship in light of Covid.  As the Westminster Confession recognizes, “there are some circumstances concerning the worship of God, and government of the Church, common to human actions and societies, which are to be ordered by the light of nature, and Christian prudence, according to the general rules of the Word, which are always to be observed” (WCF I.8).     

One thing we can know for certain is that the government does not have the right order churches closed, or general lockdowns, to prevent the spread of Covid.  We know this, not only because the civil magistrate does not have authority to prohibit what God has commanded, but also because of what the Bible teaches about how governments are to deal with disease outbreaks.  Leviticus 13 outlines the process by which the priests diagnose a man with leprosy.  Only after an official diagnosis is made is the victim put outside the camp.  There is no provision in the Law of Moses for locking down the entire population of Israel or of shuttering the tabernacle to prevent the spread of leprosy.  Only sick individuals were isolated.  This is consistent with principle of criminal justice found in Scripture.  According to Scripture, crime is to be punished, not prevented. If a crime occurs, the matter is to be investigated and the responsible individual punished.  There was no vast regulatory bureaucracy in Israel with a gigantic rule book and nosy government snoops whose mission it was to prevent crimes from happening.  To do so is to punish the innocent along with the guilty, and this is not Biblical justice.     

But this deals only with limits on civil government.  What about individual churches and congregations?  How are they to deal with Christians who disagree?  With grace.  Here it seems that the Apostle Paul’s teaching in Romans about how to handle differences about food comes into view.  There are ways churches can accommodate individuals with different views.  For example, John MacArthur was interviewed recently on CNN.  When asked by Brianna Keilar, “Why not get creative, so you can obey, as you put it ‘god’s (sic) law,’ but also obey public health regulations?” MacAuthur responded that the church had put up a tent outside with a screen and that they trusted those who came in were making adult decisions about the reality of their physical and spiritual health and how to balance them.  “Nobody’s forcing anything, they’re here because they want to be here,” said MacArthur. 

There’s a concept in economics, and this concept can be found in the Bible, called opportunity cost.  If we want more of one thing, we have to settle for less of something else.  One can go to extremes to keep from getting Covid, but doing is going to come at the cost of something else.  For example, this article states that the pandemic has increased mental health problems, including depression and anxiety.  Psychology Today openly talks about a post-Covid suicide epidemic.  The article cites another piece from the Journal of the American Medical Association which, “suggests that the unprecedented public health actions needed [this author is not of the opinion that such actions were “needed”] to contain the new pandemic, along with social distancing requirements, stay-at-home orders, and stress due to job loss, may well result in far more suicides for years to come.”  In other words, there is a very real opportunity cost to tyrannical government lockdowns in the form of deaths by suicide that could be with us for years to come. 

There are other ways the lockdown is killing people.  This article cites several ways in which the lockdown is causing people to suffer.  In addition to suicide, it mentions increased drinking and alcohol related deaths, a rise domestic abuse, missed medical care for other diseases (cancer patients missing chemotherapy, for example).  The article cites a study that estimates that 333,890 more people will die of cancer in the U.K., “due to lost healthcare services during the coronavirus shutdown.”    

As Christians and as adults, we have the right and the duty to assess for ourselves which risks we will take and which we will attempt to avoid, what tradeoffs we are willing to make and what ones we are not, what opportunity costs we are willing to bear, and which ones we see as too great.  And the value system [I’m speaking here of economic value, not moral value] we use to assess these tradeoffs, these opportunity costs, is a matter of personal decision.  It’s a matter of liberty of conscience.  As Christians, we ought to bear with one another and be willing to accommodate one another.  How one responds to Covid is a matter of personal choice, not government dictate. 

Closing Thoughts

For American Christians, the thought that government would act to forbid Sunday worship is strange and unsettling.  This isn’t supposed to happen here.  Yet, it’s the reality that we are faced with.  This author is glad to see Grace Community Church take the stance that it has.  He believes it to be Godly and hopes that it will serve as an example to other Christians who find themselves having to choose between obeying God and obeying man. 

Disobeying the civil authorities is not something most American Christians have had experience with.  For that reason, it is understandable why they may balk at pushing back on the clear governmental overreach that is preventing some of them from attending in-person worship. 

But the time is now to take a stand.

The good news is that we’re not left to our own devices how to take a stand but have the Word of God to instruct us.

Presbyterian theologian and minister Robert Reymond was fond of  referring to the Bible as the pou sto (Greek for place where I may stand) for knowledge.  This includes the knowledge of how to identify civil government overreach and what to do about it.  The short answer what to do when confronted with competing orders from the civil magistrate and the Word of God was given by Peter and the other apostles before the Sanhedrin, “We ought to obey God rather than men.”  

We say this not because we disdain the civil authority, but because we recognize that it is not the civil magistrate who is sovereign, but God, the creator and ultimate owner of the universe and the one to whom both we and the civil magistrate must give account.     

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