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Martin Luther taught that there are only two foundational messages  God is teaching us in the Bible: HUS LAW AND HUS CRACE. They form the two edges of the Sword of the Word of God (Hebrews 4:12, Revelation 1:16). In God’s plan for mankind, they are both absolutely crucial, both supplying a message the church must believe, embrace, stand firm upon, and then proclaim.  The sword of the word of God always has these two edges. As we have been investigating the Ship of the…

Surprisingly, this problem seems to have afflicted the Reformed branch of the Christian faith—those that are the most eager to build the Ship of the Kingdom we have been discussing. We can meticulously build it, carefully, according to the Bible, as we have done in these postings, yet nothing really happens. No wind in the sails!  That’s because we are all born  unconsciously addicted to obedience to the law as our way to live. It may be the law of the Bible, Sharia law…

For the past weeks, we have been investigating the three institutional weapons God has given us to use in accomplishing our original task for which we were created—ruling over the earth. We have used a diagram reflecting Dutch Reformed theologian/politician Abraham Kyper’s “sphere sovereignty” theology to illustrate how those institutional weapons function together.  Each sphere has its own, unique contribution. This idea is depicted beautifully by the diagram—the “Ship of the Kingdom”—reproduced below. This diagram represents the “big picture;” how the daily activities of…

Last week we discussed the fact that there is no neutrality in life; as Jesus said in Luke 11:23 that we are all either “for Me or against Me.” This is true in EVERY AREA of life, including civil government, i.e., POLITICS! This is an “inconvenient truth” which a huge percentage of our evangelical churches either ignore or resist. When was the last time you heard a pastor preach a sermon on the biblical characteristics of civil government, followed by a discussion on which…

  Every nation has a god, today in 2025, just as did all the nation-states that made up Canaan as Abraham first entered it 4000 years ago.  We are created to worship God, and worship we will, either the true God of the Bible or some other god we have chosen/erected ourselves. If we are Christians, we have answered that question—personally. The question, however, remains: which god will we, AS A NATION, choose to worship. Our primary choices today are Jehovah, the God of…

My first reaction to the news of Charlie Kirk’s assassination was “Oh God, how could You let this happen?” Any Christian I talked with about this tragic event, who is interested in the functioning of our civil government, agreed with my evaluation— they had never seen a young man like Charlie Kirk who more perfectly illustrated the attitude of “firmness and compassion” that God wants us to have. Most of us even saw him as J.D. Vance’s probable VP in 2028, and after 8…

In earlier blog postings I have introduced what I believe to be the definitive book on the biblical basis for our U.S. Constitution—The Roots of the American Republic, by Rev. E.C. Wines, written in the mid-nineteenth century and republished in 1997 by the Plymouth Rock Foundation. Following is a brief summary of the first four of 17 characteristics of a biblical civil government Wines mined from the Bible. Following that is a mention of some of the remaining 13 biblical characteristics he sees in…

Last week I intended to include this information in that posting, but I expanded the introductory remarks to such a degree that I decided to take a deep breath and finish the idea this week. This is that posting. The first purpose for having Civil Government is to keep God’s fallen children from killing themselves until they repent, return to their Abba Father, and begin to walk by faith. God Himself ordained the institution of Civil Government, including the power to take human life…

In this posting, we will complete our survey of the three, essential weapons God has given us to use to fulfill our creation mandate to rule over the earth (Genesis 1:26-28).  These weapons are, first,  the Family, which SUPPLIES fresh, young, “rulers-in-training” every generation. Then there is the Church, which EQUIPS these families with the vision of both the Gospel and the Kingdom of God they will be extending, plus the skill to make that vision reality. Finally, there is the Civil Government, which…

A regular reader of this Two Edges of the Sword blog sent me an enthusiastic note of approval after reading a recent posting. However, she concluded her note with this question: “But where is the Holy Spirit in all this?” I dropped a note back to her, reminding her that the Sword of the Word of God always has two edges. There is the first edge, the Law edge, that tells us what we must do to please God. The second edge is the…