The Lord Jesus Christ is seated at the right hand of God the Father. That should affect things down here.
As He exercises His authority, we discover in the Word that this authority is all encompassing. To use Kuyper’s phrase, not one square inch exists concerning which the Lord Jesus does not say, “Mine.” So the pietist might want the Lord’s dominion to be limited to that space behind our eyes and between our ears. The ecclesiastic might want the reservation to be a little bigger, but still limited to Sunday mornings in the sanctuary. In contrast to all such restrictive theologies, the reformational understanding of Christ’s dominion sees it as extending over all things. The authority of Christ is great and extends over that which we believe to be great — the rise and fall of kingdoms, nations, and empires. The authority of Christ is great and also extends over the number of rocks in my gravel driveway.
Clearly, this should transform how we understand our lives — how we vote, how we work, how we sweep the porch, how we hold our wives. The Word of God has authority over everything it addresses, and as Van Til put it, it addresses everything.
But for too many Christians, this is done in a superficial “Honk if you love Jesus” way. For example, when the faith is taken into the business world, nothing really happens unless you count putting that little fish in the corner of the yellow pages ad. This means that when other Christians look at the ad, they think they ought to take their business there — “And because we are Christians, maybe he’ll give us a discount.” I wonder why no one ever says, “Look! A Christian business. Why don’t we take our business there so we can add ten percent to our bill — help out a brother a little.” This sort of “religious club” mentality is not the result of submitting our businesses to the authority of Christ; it is simply clannishness. In those businesses where Christ is truly honored, affecting the approach to debt, making payroll, etc., the results are a wonderful testimony to the reign of Christ. So we should long for the day when evangelical Christians have the general reputation for hard work and honest dealing that the Huguenots had in France. We are not there yet.
But business is just one area among many. When we think about our entire lives under the exhaustive authority of Christ, the world should begin to see that God can bless the work of our hands when we acknowledge the rule of His Son. Christians have been taking the lead, for example, in the work of education. We long for the day when unbelievers acknowledge that in their community, it is the Christians who know how to educate their children. This is beginning to occur. The world has pretty much admitted it does not know how to teach a child, and so the believers had a good opportunity, and have taken good advantage of it thus far.
Other opportunities are presenting themselves as well. In two significant areas, the world has collapsed, and Christians could take the initiative if they began to understand the authority of Christ. The first is the realm of aesthetics. A walk through our art galleries reveals our cultural bankruptcy as few other activities can. Just as it is a bad sign when a culture’s philosophers do not know what wisdom is, it is equally grim when her artists do not know what beauty is. But here, although the opportunity is great, Christians have not been taking any advantage of it. All we do is paint cutesy little pictures and put them on posters or plaques, and sometimes on sawblades. The opportunity for Christian artists is great — but they must know that Christ is ascended.
The second area, not to be coy, is in the area of celebration. This struck me recently when we were arranging for the reception for our daughter’s wedding. The place we were looking to have the celebration was on the campus of the local secularist government university. We wanted the jubilation to be rich, and with a lot of red, red wine. The secular humanists pursed their lips just like Miss Grundy and said “Nothing doing, no alcohol on campus.” And it struck me. Secularism is not just a bogus faith. It is not just wrong. On top of everything else, it is a wet blanket. Non-Christians don’t know how to celebrate. And when they do get hold of the stuff they careen out of control. Somebody needs to show them how to party.
When unbelievers get together to drink, or dance, or whatever, they do it to forget how miserable they are. But biblical Christians have a need to overflow, and should sing and dance and drink because they are full. When we look at the secularists who are the supposed experts in celebration, all we can see is that glazed eye druggie look, clothes that hang on the body, and hair every which way. Everybody looks like they are just back from an unsuccessful exorcism. These are the people who are leading the way in gladness? “No, thank you,” we should say — but only if we then know what to do.
The answer, as with so much else, begins with getting our theology straight. Christ was crucified under Pilate, buried, raised by His Father, and ascended into heaven. And that, as they say, makes all the difference.