Romans 6:5 For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection, 6 knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be [a]done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. 7 For he who has died has been [b]freed from sin. 8 Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, 9 knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over Him. 10 For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. 11 Likewise you also, [c]reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Too often this passage is approached to on a subjective, experiential manner and so is appealed to as an existential event in the life of the individual believer. It goes something like, “I gave my life to Jesus and when I did that I was united together with him in the likeness of His death, with the promise that I shall one day be resurrected with Him and so I count myself dead to sin but alive in Christ. This is my testimony.” While such a reading is not completely errant there is another way to read the passage that perhaps is more accurate. What if the Apostle is teaching here in Romans 6 that it is the corporate body (the Church) as the body that was crucified and resurrected with Christ? What if St. Paul is speaking here of eschatological realities and what he is saying, as inspired by the Spirit, is that the Church as the Church, because of the crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension of Christ (see Ephesians 2:6) is now living in the eschatological “age to come.” Because we are living in the eschatological age to come (with a fuller fulfillment yet ahead) we are a people (as the Church) who can live increasingly as dead to sin as a controlling agent in our lives (as we did when we were united to Adam covenantally) but alive to God in Christ.

This reading of this portion of Romans is a covenantal reading that requires us to understand that the Church as the body of Christ is in the New Creation (II Cor. 5:17) right now because of the Redemptive work of Jesus Christ. This reading has a much more objective status then the reading that concentrates on the individual believer. There are certain realities in the Church that are objectively true because of the finished work of Jesus Christ and the Church’s union with Him in that work. Because of the Church’s union with Christ in His finished work we have been translated from the Kingdom of darkness (our former eschatological status) and have been translated into the Kingdom of God’s dear Son whom He loves. The Church as the body of Christ was united to Christ so that in his crucifixion, resurrection, ascension and session the Church itself currently experiences the eschatological realities which are true of Christ in such a way that while “not yet” having all that is to come we genuinely have a foretaste of what is not yet in the fullness of the “now” that we have been given as united to Christ. The Church has what the Old Testament saints could only long for and that is the “nowness” of eschatological Kingdom life. The Church lives in the eschatological inauguration of the Kingdom. The Church


Too often the contemporary Reformed church because of its refusal of the eschatology that teaches this (Vosian amillennialism which finally found a way to be consistent and so become postmillennialism) to often lives like it remains in a Old Covenant position of the saints waiting for the in-breaking of the Kingdom of God. Too often the modern Reformed Church lives as if they remain in the epoch of the “not yet,” forgetting that with the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ the “now” of the Kingdom has dawned upon us and that the Church, living in the inaugurated now, is God’s new humanity living in God’s new creation, enjoying the fruits of His triumph. Right now, as the Church, we are living in the New Jerusalem commissioned to expand the borders of that age to come community so that the present Kingdom of God covers the earth as the waters cover the sea. And all this because in being united to Christ and His work of Redemption we are His conquering agents of redemption.

We often claim Romans 6 as true for us individually (and it is) but we don’t reckon ourselves alive to God in our Lord Jesus Christ as those who are prophets, priests, and kings under sovereign God. Instead we reckon ourselves to be like the OT saints who were still waiting for the fulness of all those realities that Christ ushered in by bringing in the Kingdom. Alternately, if we do reckon ourselves alive to God in our Lord Jesus Christ we sterilize the meaning of that phrase by saying that such reckoning is “spiritual,” or only “personal” and so gnosticize the text.

If we have been already now raised with Christ (Eph. 2:6) then we as Christians should expect to rule now with Christ over the nations. Our ambitions should be global to the end of embracing Warfield’s post-millennial universalism – the expectation that all men will bow to Christ with the current nations being delivered as nations to become outposts of the Kingdom of God.

Anything less is dereliction of duty.

As we begin this morning teasing out the meaning of Romans 13:1 forward let us begin with looking at this issue from a “salvation” perspective.

We might ask ourselves this morning what Romans 13 and the Gospel of salvation have to do with each other. Let’s see if we can connect those dots.

First, certainly we can agree that as Romans 13 is part of Scripture and that the issue it deals with (the nature of citizen obedience to Magistrates) is clearly part and parcel of what we call Christianity. It would not be in Scripture if it was not. However, we are looking to bore in even more tightly to ask if Romans 13 has anything to do with the death of Christ and the issue of our salvation.

I would say the answer is most definitely yes. Remember, as we looked at just a few weeks ago, the goal of the Christ-less state is to become God walking on the earth who sees it as their job to provide a humanist salvation to all under their charge. This salvation that the Christ-less state is offering is one that provides a very different salvation than the salvation provided by the God of the Bible.

Per the German historian Ethelebert Stauffer the religious foundation of Rome, from the days of Augustus Caesar forward was, “Salvation is to be found in none other save Augustus, and there is no other name given to men in which they can be saved.” I hope that terminology sounds familiar. It was the same terminology that Peter used in Acts 4:12 when he quite deliberately said of Jesus Christ,

“Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).

So we see that there exists these competing salvation(s). One can trust the State for Salvation and commit themselves to the State to be saved. They can become wards of the State and look for the State to take care of them from the womb to the tomb. They can obey the State as their savior, when it is demanding obedience for the most Christ-less of things and that even if the State is seeking to save them from Christ by the obedience that the Christ-less state is requiring.

Or alternately one can look for salvation in Christ and understand that all other salvations are idolatrous salvations that will leave us not saved in the end. We have an anti-thesis then… a war if you please, between Christ and Ceaser. The State and its emperors offer salvation and the price you must pay is complete obedience or Christ bequeaths complete salvation and the consequence is a lifetime of obedience driven by gratitude for what you’ve been freely given.

This is how Romans 13 thus touches on the issue of salvation. Either we believe that God has provided a perfect salvation in Christ or we believe that the state must be unquestioned and obeyed no matter what it requires.

We have for a very long time now found the state returning to the aspirations of the Caesars.

“Trust the State. It will take care of you.”
“If you run out of money and lose your job we will provide a UBI.”
“You must take this vaccine because it will give you life abundant.”
“The State will be omnipresent to you as you receive this RIFD chip w/ vaccine.”
“You can trust us when we let criminals out of jail because they are in danger of this disease… oh, and by the way, you, as law abiding citizens, must submit to house arrest because of the same danger.”

Don’t you see?

The state is seeking to be a savior who provides a salvation that is contrary to the salvation found in Christ. You must take this vaccine because in just such a way you can have life and life abundantly. You must be willing to be tracked in order to affirm the state’s omnipresence. You must not question the state because the state in its aseity is beyond questioning.

And when we yield up to them an obedience that is not theirs to be had we are pledging them our fealty … a fealty which belongs to Christ alone as our savior and who provides our salvation.

And so this is how Romans 13 and understanding it properly nestles up to the doctrine of salvation. Either we will trust the finished work of Christ for our complete salvation or we will trust the state and walk in terms of its authority even while claiming a Christ other than the one Peter declared.

So, when we look at a proper understanding of Romans 13 – one which requires and provides for disobedience to wicked magistrates – we are looking at an issue that touches on salvation. Either we will obey the wicked magistrates and so show that we are looking to the state for salvation or we will trust Christ and so demonstrate we will have no God but God for our salvation embracing that disobedience to tyrants is obedience of God.

Multiculturalism is the putative attempt to build a cultural infrastructure on the basis of the presence of competing cultures, competing gods, competing epistemological authorities, and competing religions. It offers itself as the solution to ethnic and cultural diversity holding out the promise that with a multicultural political administration people of different faiths, heritages, and religions can all live peacefully together without abandoning their respective distinctions. Just as the official religious model of pluralism separated Church and state so unofficial religious model of Multiculturalism separates nation and state. In the multicultural model there is no national faith or religion but only national faiths and religions. In the multiculturalism model there is no agreed upon national epistemology or teleology but only national epistemologies and theologies. In the multicultural model there is no one national ethnic people group or heritage but only national people groups and heritages. In brief in multiculturalism the nation is defined by its multipolar characteristics and not by the previous identification of a nation by its unipolar dynamics.

Continuing to seek to be clear about this matter, multiculturalism holds that a set geographic space (a country) belongs to everyone without qualification and therefore belongs to nobody in particular. If the multicultural model has a people group (and it does) its people group are those whose roots are defined by rootlessness, whose god is defined as all gods and no gods, whose loyalty is to the proposition that we are loyal to the idea that we should only be loyal to the rootless people group who share our rootlessness. In theory multiculturalism is cosmopolitan, indistinct, non-hierarchical, and predominantly non-judgmental.

But is that really possible and is multiculturalism really what it advertises itself as set forth above? This post will examine those claims and will seek to move the reader to the conclusion that multiculturalism is, in fact, a monocultural system and expresses itself monoculturally just as much as any blood and soil nation that anyone would desire to set forth.

Keep in mind that the avowed purpose of the multicultural state is to be found supporting no set people group, no set religion, no set culture, no set heritage, no set language, no set teleology, no set epistemology. A multicultural social order serves no one god, and is beholden to no one set of moral underpinning or no one established law order. Multiculturalism favors the culture of everybody, and so nobody. It is the social order theory that pursues neutrality in all matters so as to favor no one and nothing.

However, at that very moment where it supports no one and nothing it has given us a social order that is monocultural in its negation of all the previous affirmations. In all its negations multiculturalism affirms the one truth that all truths are true. Multiculturalism putatively thus distinguishes itself from all monocultures which insist on just one truth in culture, heritage, epistemology, teleology, language, history, religion (faith), truth, etc. by its acceptance of a plurality of the above. However, in its denial of the just one way of all other monocultures, multiculturalism has embraced and affirmed the culture of just one way of many ways. Multiculturalism has rejected monoculturalism with the result that it has become monocultural in its insistence that if you want to fit into the multicultural experience one must reject all other “just one ways.”

For example, if I insist that Christian culture and social order is the one way to go because of its superior nature I have obviously affirmed the one way of Christianity. However, if I insist on the other hand that Christian culture and social order is not the one way to go but rather all cultures must be affirmed under one political organization then what I am saying is that the one way of multiculturalism with its many ways is the one best social order and all should accept it. So, multiculturalism ends up not genuinely being multicultural but is monocultural. Multiculturalism has one people (all those who desire to mix their bloods), one heritage (the heritage that embraces all heritages) one religion / theology (pantheism), one teleology (Utopian New World Order), one epistemology (pantheistic rationalism), and one culture (uni-culture) and in these commitments Multiculturalism is rabidly opposed to any other monoculture that would arise to challenge its cultural hegemony.

To use a possibly helpful analogy we thing of J.R.R. Tolkiens conversation between two of his characters in “The Fellowship of the Ring.” Let Saruman here stand for multiculturalism and Gandalf here stand for the self-admitted monocultures.

“For I am Saruman the Wise, Saruman Ring-maker, Saruman of Many Colours!’

I looked then and saw that his robes, which had seemed white, were not so, but were woven of all colours, and if he moved they shimmered and changed hue so that the eye was bewildered.

I liked white better,’ I said.

White!’ he sneered. ‘It serves as a beginning. White cloth may be dyed. The white page can be overwritten; and the white light can be broken.’

In which case it is no longer white,’ said I. ‘And he that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.’ – Gandalf”

One sees here that Saruman’s many colors, though many remains one. Saruman can never go back to just one color (white) because he has embraced the one color of many colors. He is mono-hued precisely because he is multi-hued.

So it is with multiculturalism. It is mono-cultural precisely because it is multicultural. It can never go back to one people serving one God having one religion because it has embraced being the one people who are many people serving a pantheon of gods having the one religion of pantheism.

As we are fighting multiculturalism then we have to remember that it is every bit as mono-cultural has any other system. It merely hides that mono-cultural reality by the flowery language of multiculturalism. It is naught different from Rome of old which claimed a multiculturalism that allowed any people group they swallowed to worship any god they like as long as they would pinch incense to the real god of the system — The State as embodied in Caesar.

Pointing this all out we learn that multiculturalism is a myth. Any state that seeks to pursue multiculturalism as a social order is merely pursuing its own apotheosis. Those Westerners who sing the glories of multiculturalism do so because they are seeking to escape the previous social order of Christendom preferring instead what they wrongly believe is a less restricted cultural existence.

We should note here at the end that multiculturalism as a pursued doctrinaire social order has in an overwhelming and disproportionate manner effected those social orders and cultures which previously occupied by those who were White Christians. You seldom hear of the pursuit of multiculturalism anyplace except in those environs which were once comprised of White Christians. The reason for this is simple. Only in White Christian countries (previously known as “The West,” or “Christendom”) did you find nations that were epistemologically self conscious about serving the God of the Bible only. Multiculturalism thus is a back door attack on Christ and His Kingship over peoples. If multiculturalism is allowed to thrive in once Christian lands the result will be a return to the old paganism of the old gods as found in lands which have previously been multicultural. We see that happening around us already as we find a return to various sexual perversity, the tatt and piercing now so prevalent, the novelty of Christian denominations supporting the building of Mosques, and other curios that scream we are indeed embracing a new mono-culture called multiculturalism.

One more point before closing. Multiculturalism can be pursued in two ways. The most common way that we see is what has been explained above. It is the allowing of all the gods back into the social order and so having the religious basis of the social order be Pantheism. However, by doing the seemingly exact opposite one arrives at nearly the same place by forbidding any of the gods back into the social order and so having the religious basis of the social order be Atheism. Whether one allows all the gods in the public square or throws all the gods out of the public square one will end up with the same kind of social order since where a social order serves all the gods they are serving none of the gods is much the same as a social order that serves none of the gods. This explains why Communist social orders like China end up in much the same place culturally as social orders that embrace pantheism. In each case it is the State (man said collectively) that rises to the status of God walking on the earth.

plu·ral·ism/ˈplo͝orəˌlizəm/
noun

1. a political theory or system of power-sharing among a number of political parties.

2. a theory or system that recognizes more than one ultimate principle.

Pluralism says … “There are many ways to acceptably arrive at truth.” However what is really being said here is, “the one way In order to arrive at truth is to allow many ways to arrive at truth.”

So … the pluralist is not really being pluralistic because he has one way to truth that requires that many ways be allowed as ways to truth. The false pluralist will viciously disagree with the honest non pluralist who says contrary to the false pluralist, “there is only one way to truth and that one way is this one way.”

You see the argument is not really over whether there is more than one way to truth. The argument is over the pluralists one way to truth which is many ways and the non pluralists one way to truth which is one way.

Pluralism is a myth.

The same kind of reasoning is true for postmodernism as well. Postmodernism claims there is no such thing as capital “T” truth allowing for a plurality of truths that are unique to both small identifiable groups and even as unique to individuals. Everyone has their own truth, or so the theory goes.

But of course, like pluralism, this is all myth. Postmodernism does indeed have capital “T” truth and that capital “T” truth is that there is no such thing as capital “T” truth. As such, per postmodernism, any system that says there is such a thing as capital “T” truth is denying the capital “T” truth of postmodernism and so is ruled out a-priori as truth. So, postmodernism is not really about people having each their own truths but rather is a totalistic system that demands that everyone bow to their capital “T” truth.

Postmodernism is a myth.

“You have to defeat Trumpism. You have to defeat the idea that America is a place and not an idea.”

James Carville

Even as an old man now, Carville continues ragin’ like the Cajun he is. However, this rage is refreshing if only because it lays bare the Democratic agenda.

Carville, in this interview, was going off on how the Democrats have to landslide Trump’s “fat ass” in the 2024 election in order to forever put to rest the idea of Trumpism, which Carville interprets, as meaning the vision that America is a place and not an idea. This is the old debate of “America as a propositional nation (Carville’s “America as idea”) and “America as place” characterized by people group identity, love of physical home, and love of forebears and descendants who together make America a identifiable place that can not be inhabited by third world denizens without destroying it as a recognizable place. It is the difference between America as an abstraction (Carville) and America as a concrete transgenerational entity (Trump in his better moments). It is the difference between the vision of the Globalists who intend to turn the whole world into their singular idea (call it what you will) and the vision of the Nationalists who desire to keep America for Americans.

In Carville’s and the Democratic vision America is welded together by people who affirm the same propositions. It doesn’t matter if you’re a feminist, an Asian, a sodomite, a trucker, a Black man, a transsexual, a business owner, an abortion doctor, a Homemaker, or an illegal Muslim immigrant from Somalia, because you can all affirm the same ideas and therefore can all be Americans. A shared history, a shared language, a shared kinship, a shared culture in the Democratic vision is verboten and is un-American. For the Carvillian Democratic vision America is an idea that can redefined according to the needs of the moment.

Actually, these two visions (America as a place vs. America as an idea) is really part of the larger philosophical debate between America as being and America as becoming. For those who see America as a place, America is definable, whereas for those who see America as an idea American is in process of being defined. Between those two beliefs stands the devil and the deep blue sea.

Of course it is my conviction, contra Carville, that America is and always has been a place before it is an idea. Alternately, it is my idea that America is a place and not an abstracted idea. I put it this way because I am fully confident that Carville sees America as a place as well as an idea, but Carville’s vision of America as a place is characterized by the idea that America is where people come if they want to live in a place that has no roots, no historical identity, no sense of kinship. Carville’s definition of America is Scripture’s definition of Hell.

If I were the Trump campaign I would run this Carville quote in a negative add spot and I may well make it the cornerstone of my campaign.

Commercial opens with Carville quote and the segues to the camera panning majestic American countryside. Shows farmers combining Wheat…. dockworkers unloading ships … ranchers feeding cattle … lobster-man working their boats. Scenes like this continue with the following voice over.

“Democrats desire America to be an idea… an abstraction. They desire to deny that Americans have reflected America. We are people of rugged individualism precisely because the place we call home is characterized by its rugged beauty.

America is not an idea. America is the place where our parents, Grandparents and Great-grandparents lived and died. It is the place where our children are growing up. America is no more an idea than the homes we live in are ideas or the family reunions we have are ideas. America is a place and if America ever becomes merely an idea — a set of propositions — America is finished as America.

Our Founders understood that. Listen to just one of them,

“Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people, a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs, without which a common and free government would be impossible.” ~~John Jay, Federalist #2

America a place? Always if I am your President.”

I’m Donald Trump and I support this message.