No kings. That’s not politics, that’s the Bible
No kings.
That’s not a political statement; that’s the teaching of the entirety of Scripture.
But wait, aren’t there many kings throughout the Bible? Didn’t Israel enjoy its greatest years under Solomon? Shouldn’t we want a great king like David?
Yes, there are, and they’re the poster boys for why we shouldn’t want one. The kings of Israel and Judah were a mixed bag at best; their many evil rulers led their kingdoms to ruin. But even the “good” kings were ultimately failures:
David’s sins had catastrophic consequences for his nation. His adultery led to strife within his family that tore the nation apart, resulting in “a great slaughter of twenty thousand” (2 Samuel 18:7). Then, because of his literally satanic census, “the Lord sent a plague upon Israel, and seventy thousand men of Israel fell” (1 Chronicles 21:14). That’s a body count of 90,000, thanks to Israel’s greatest king.
Solomon built the temple and led worship in it, but that didn’t stop his heart from turning away to other gods and doing evil in the sight of the Lord (1 Kings 11:4-10). That led to the division of the kingdom into two.
Related: Jeroboam: The popular but evil leader raised up by God
Jehoshaphat was a good king of Judah — mostly. His alliance with the house of Israel’s King Ahab — which displeased the Lord (2 Chronicles 19:2, 20:35) — culminated in their children marrying, and their descendant Athaliah almost wiped out the line of David; only young Joash survived.
Jehu wrought the Lord’s judgment on the house of Ahab and Jezebel, rid Israel of Baal worship, and became the only northern king who had done anything right. But he never repented of his own idolatry (2 Kings 10:29-31).
Uzziah was initially described as doing what was right in the Lord’s sight (2 Chronicles 26:4), but he was stricken with leprosy because of his pride and anger in the temple (verse 19), and he died an outcast (21).
Hezekiah led a great revival in Judah, and his prayer saved the kingdom from Assyrian invaders. But his proud heart brought God’s wrath upon him and his people (2 Chronicles 32:25).
Even Josiah, who returned Judah to the law of God and reinstituted Passover, was killed in battle because he didn’t listen to the word of God (2 Chronicles 35:22).
Of course, none of these kings could keep their kingdoms — and their own children —from the apostasy that eventually resulted in their downfall. Their reforms never lasted. As Judah was being taken into exile in Babylon, God pronounced a curse on Jeconiah, Judah’s second-last king:
“Thus says the Lord:
‘Write this man down as childless,
A man who shall not prosper in his days;
For none of his descendants shall prosper,
Sitting on the throne of David,
And ruling anymore in Judah.’”
(Jeremiah 22:30).
The Lord ended the monarchy. After Jeconiah’s uncle Zedekiah, God’s people never again had a king, except for the evil, Roman-appointed Herods. When their true King arrived, He didn’t wield political power but ushered in a kingdom without borders or weapons. He sent out His people armed with nothing but the Holy Spirit and the gospel. They never tried to establish an earthly monarchy, nor told future generations of Christians to do so.
Related: Why God no longer works through nation-states
God had warned Israel that demanding a king was rejecting Him (1 Samuel 8:7), because their king was always meant to be Him. God’s ordination of kingdom in Israel was not because that was their destiny, but because its destruction was. A fallen man was never meant to reign from Jerusalem, where the crown would make his natural depravity a dreadful curse upon the land. The assignment of power to men was meant only to demonstrate their unworthiness of it.
Related: When God’s people wanted a strongman to fight for them
That still goes for us today. America’s founding fathers recognized this when they rebelled against their king, and so they intentionally designed a government that rejected the power of monarchy and established a republic in which the executive branch was the weakest. Whenever men have attained the power of an empire, they have either collapsed, apostasized, and/or become the very tyrants they thought they were replacing, and no more righteous.
Related: The absolute, universal, inevitable corruption of power
We’re not supposed to have a king, because Jesus is King. The purpose of Israel’s monarchy was to point to the only Man worthy of the throne, not only typologically, but by its failure. So those today who yearn to give power to a strongman are just repeating Israel’s disastrous mistakes, and rejecting the one true King.
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