Co-Belligerency & Sphere Sovereignty ft. Joey DeRuntz

Joey One thing that we get a lot is, “Just preach the gospel. You’re never going to be able to change society unless you change the hearts of the people.” Which in one sense is true, but by and large it’s not.

And what you end up doing is putting yourself in an infinite regress. If I’m discipling somebody and I’m just preaching the gospel, and I’m telling that person, “Don’t get involved in any of these other areas, just preach the gospel” — he’s going to do that, and then he’s going to have disciples, and then he’s going to have disciples.

If we have 350 million Christians in this area, that’s a great thing. But if nobody’s actually engaging in the civil sphere, then how are we laboring to make sure that we have a peaceful and quiet life?

Philip All right. Hello and welcome to All Are Yours. So again, you will see three faces and hear three voices this time.

Welcome to the next episode. Apart from Sean and me, we have with us today Mr. Joey DeRuntz. Pastor — Pastor Joey DeRuntz. Reverend. Pastor Reverend Doctor? No, not Doctor. Pastor Reverend Joey DeRuntz.

He’s a pastor in Vancouver, Washington. He was originally born and raised in the Bay Area, California. And Sean, that’s kind of where you were as well, or you spent some time in that area.

Sean I mean, I honeymooned in San Francisco. But no, I didn’t spend lots of time in the Bay Area. Nor was I incarcerated in the Bay Area — which is included in Joey’s bio.

Philip Right. So he was born and raised in the Bay Area, California, and then saved through reading his Bible while incarcerated.

Sean Can we just stop and hear some more of that story before we get into the main topic?

Philip Is that allowed?

Joey Yeah. I was raised in a household where both of my parents were non-practicing Catholics — and they came by that generationally.

My grandpa got saved later in life. He was Roman Catholic, altar boy, all of that; became a cop, all of those things. And then my grandma started going to a Christian church, and my grandpa was like, “Well, I’m going to win against these people. I’m going to argue with them and beat them, so I’m going to pick up my Bible so I have something to work with.” And then God saves him. So he ends up going to seminary later in life.

I had a little bit of that influence from a young age, and occasionally my family would go to his church, but it wasn’t a regular thing.

My parents divorced when I was around fifteen, and in my flesh it was a lot of freedom that I then had. I could tell Dad I’m at Mom’s house, Mom I’m at Dad’s house, and then just go do whatever. So I really got wrapped up in sin and in sinful lifestyles — selling drugs and all of that. Got arrested, and then decided, okay, I need to do some reform on my life, some moral reform. I’m not going to go to church or anything like that. And then ended up getting arrested again a few years later and ended up going to prison.

I reached out to my grandparents to see if they’d send me a Bible. I didn’t really have an intention of reading it. I just wanted them to think I was doing the right thing, so they’d maybe put some money on my books so I wouldn’t starve in there. And they sent me a MacArthur one-year Bible.

It was January when I got arrested, so I figured, I’ve got time. I can try and catch up to the date, I’ll read a couple a day. And it was Proverbs 1, really, that the Lord used to open my eyes. “My son, if sinners entice you, do not go with them.” And reading through: “Such is the way of everyone who is greedy for gain; it takes away the life of its possessors.”

That just hit me, because I was greedy for gain. I was running around with the kinds of people the Bible says not to. And I’m looking at a really long prison sentence. I’ve basically lost my life, for all intents and purposes. And I had heard enough of the gospel to know that I needed to repent of my sins and I needed to trust in Christ’s cross-work. So that morning I cried out to the Lord, and I believe that’s when he saved me and rescued me.

And then it was a lot of really slow growth. When I finally got out — I got a three-year sentence, got out with halftime on good behavior — I started going to church with my grandparents, and it was there that I met my wife.

The Lord kept working on me, and I started to have a desire to teach and a desire to shepherd. So I did an internship at the church there. Then after a while I realized, if I’m going to do this for the rest of my life, I need to be equipped, I need to get trained. I applied to The Master’s Seminary and was surprised when I got accepted, because — “Have you ever been arrested?” Fill out this extra page. “Have you ever used illegal drugs?” Fill out this extra page. I’m just like, there’s no way they’re going to let me in. It’s just not going to happen.

But then we had our first kid. Chloe was about six months old, and we moved down and went to seminary. And then after seminary, Carl Hargrove from Grace Advance told me about this opportunity I needed to check out up here in Washington State, with a church plant. We came up, and we just loved the people, and we prayed about it, and here we are.

Philip And so you’ve been in Washington since about 2018 or so?

Joey Yeah.

Philip Okay, there you go. And compared to the Bay Area, the climate up here — do you like this? Do you like down there better?

Joey Ideally I would like somewhere like San Diego, where it’s nice and warm and not too hot, and there’s a warm ocean at the end of summer.

But when you read through the Puritans — our climate and their climate, and when you go visit over there, it’s very similar. So it was just another physical touch point that links me back to these men of old that I respect and admire and love and I’m thankful for. So we’ve come to really love and appreciate the different seasons we get up here.

Philip There you go. So if you want to be closer to the Puritans, closer to godliness — the Pacific Northwest is the place to be.

Sean There it is. And your wife, was she also born and raised in California?

Joey Yeah, Bay Area, California.

Sean My wife was born and raised in the Los Angeles area, so Marysville was definitely a challenge for the first few years, from the kind of weather she was used to.

Joey We had Pastor Hornbaker and his wife come up. They were coming from seminary — they’re from South Dakota — and they loved LA. We brought them up during the summer to come visit, and they loved it. Up till then, when we had been here, almost every day the sun would come out, maybe for a little bit; you just have to make sure you go outside. So they moved up — and that first winter was so dark. There was no sun. I just felt so bad.

Philip Yep. There you go.

Sean And Philip, are you going to say how we actually even know who Joey is? Were we going to talk about how we came across him, how we’ve met him?

Philip Yeah, that’s right. Originally we met Joey because we went down to a conference that you guys hosted in Vancouver — the elders from our church, from Trinity Evangel. And we saw about that conference because of Chris LeDuc. He was speaking there.

Sean Eric Cooper, yeah — because I didn’t know Chris LeDuc either. But Eric Cooper, a friend who goes to a church in Tacoma, was Facebook friends with Chris LeDuc, and Chris LeDuc seemed to be posting about some dispensational and political things, which seemed interesting. And then we found out that Chris was going to be one of the speakers at the political Christianity conference that Master’s Bible Church — which is officially in Battle Ground, or is it Vancouver?

Joey Yeah.

Sean So we’re like, we’ve got to go meet these people.

Philip Right. And that’s been kind of my side purpose on X and social media: to find more dispensational-type people who are reading the Bible in a way that I appreciate, but who are also thinking about the world in a way that is consistent with that reading. That’s where I found Chris LeDuc.

And through that, it was a pleasure to go down to the conference you guys hosted. There was a — what was the name of the conference? Political Christianity —

Sean Something “menace.”

Philip Menace —

Sean — or mandate.

Philip “Menace or Mandate.” There you go. And it was great.

Since then there’s been some more activity, and then, Joey, you had published an article called “A Rejoinder to Don Green: A Biblical and Theological Defense of Co-Belligerency.” That article touches on a lot of the different topics that we like talking about, and so we wanted to have Joey on and discuss some of these things. I’ll have a link to that article in the show notes.

Sean What prompted you to write that article?

Joey Let me throw a shameless plug in really quick. We’re doing the conference again, but this time we’re going to do it in June — so when the sun —

Sean — might come out.

Joey Yes. So maybe we can take advantage of some outside space. That’s going to be the Church Militant conference. And I think registration’s open.

Philip Okay. I’ll have a link to that as well.

Sean Well, yeah, we can plug more — because you are part of the Unmasked podcast.

Joey Yeah, we’re starting that up again, and we’re going to be going over Christian thinking, and especially Christian thinking in the different spheres. Maybe within the next month or less, you should start to see some more stuff coming out of there.

Sean Which is you and Justin Hornbaker?

Joey That one is Tyler Long and me. The Church Militant podcast is Justin Hornbaker and me.

Sean And how many other podcasts are you also a part of?

Joey This one. Right now. We have a YouTube and SermonAudio.

Sean And it’s mastersbiblechurch.com? Does that sound right?

Joey Yep.

Sean Okay. Now our people can find you — and complain if they don’t like what you say.

Joey Yeah, absolutely. Questions, comments, cries of outrage, screams of panic, as one of my professors used to say. I love saying that too.

But yeah — how that started. When you look at the timeline of it, Charlie Kirk had just been murdered publicly, and there were all of these different kinds of narratives as to who he was and what that was. Not even getting into the Candace Owens garbage, but: who he was, what that was, was he really a martyr? All of that stuff started to come out.

I really loved seeing Charlie Kirk. You could see, when you look at his timeline, over time he’s growing in his understanding of Scripture. And he was such a good example in so many ways, because he was a doer and a hearer. He had less hearing early on, but he was all about doing. And then over time, the more he’s hearing, he’s implementing it in his doing. So you see him being very obedient to the Lord with the information that he does have, and you start seeing him trending to be more and more theologically conservative.

And then Don Green had this post, and it was discouraging people — right after — from partnering with or looking at or having any kind of relationship with TPUSA. And the reasons he was giving, and his thinking through it — and then knowing, okay, this guy’s in my camp. This is a guy I look up to.

The first — what was it? It wasn’t Shepherds Conference, it was Truth Matters Conference, that I kind of got forced into by some friends. They said, “We bought you a ticket, there’s no way out of this, you’ve got to go.” And I heard him speak on repentance, and it was one of the best messages I had ever heard as a young Christian on repentance.

So seeing that, and seeing other people from our camp coming out and bashing these things — it reeked at first, to me, just of pietism. And that’s something we had covered on the Unmasked podcast, seeing all this pietism within our camp.

Sean Say what — when you say pietism, how would you describe that?

Joey The aspect of pietism I’m focusing on — because it had some good stuff — is more of the personal, individualistic aspect of Christianity, just focusing on me, my heart, my walk with Christ. Which is important. But it’s to lead to something else, right? It’s not to just end there. And so you see more of the retreatist aspect that you see with some pietists over time.

So then I really wanted to go: okay, how do I figure out how we got here? Because if I can figure out how we got here, that’s going to help me be able to identify errors as they pop up. Like the Anabaptism that’s there, and then, surprisingly, papism that you see creeping in too. So you have some legalism, you have Anabaptism, you have some pietism, and you have some papism. You have a little bit from each one of these things all converging together and making this kind of a person.

And then, over time, reading through the Puritans — I fell in love with the Puritans before seminary, and really started digging in a lot more after seminary, when I had time to choose what I got to read. Seeing how they handled Scripture in a lot of ways was really encouraging, because they could take the significance of a passage and say, look at all these different ways it applies: this is how it applies in this area, and in this area, and in this area. That was so helpful.

So, learning from them, and then learning from Bavinck and then Kuyper, and kind of tracing that through — I’m starting to see the robustness and practicality of theology. Really, the sufficiency of Scripture in a very practical way. The spheres of authority was huge. The three uses of the law was huge. All of that is kind of framing things.

And then I’m reading Schaeffer. And Schaeffer is taking a lot of that theology and applying it to culture and history and saying, hey, here’s how we got here, here’s what we need to do to remedy this.

And we’ve got guys in our camp that are taking — it’s like a latent antinomianism, or it’s “it’s all going to burn anyway, so what’s the point?” It’s like, well, you don’t live your life that way in every other area. That’s just something you’re using in your head, with a quick little argument, to disobey the commands of God. It’s the same kind of thing if we put it in a different category: be holy as God is holy. That will happen, because Christ will glorify us — so what’s the point? Why shouldn’t we just continue in sin that grace may abound?

It’s that kind of thinking. And they’re saying, okay, within the sphere of the church and for the individual Christian, we shouldn’t do that — but it’s okay to do that in these other spheres.

So seeing that, and seeing the number of people I know who like what Don Green is espousing in this — and hoping also, hey, maybe he just needs a little push and a little correction, some brotherly love on that, like we all need at times — I decided to think through this and to write something out, and to use what he’s espousing, that so many people seem to be agreeing with, that is doctrinally false, as a springboard. Okay, let’s tear down what’s there. It’s like presuppositional apologetics, right? Let’s tear down what’s there that’s wrong, and then let’s build up what’s right.

Sean Yeah. My wife worked at Grace to You when I was down at The Master’s Seminary, and Don Green was at Grace to You at that time as well. My wife accidentally, on the drive to work one morning, couldn’t see because the sun was so bright — she couldn’t see a bicyclist, and ended up, not hurting the bicyclist, but her truck actually hit the bicyclist. My wife was very upset about it, and Don Green was right out there encouraging her, being a minister of comfort and peace to her.

Then Don actually moved to Cincinnati. And my sister — I only have one sibling, a younger sister by a couple of years — she had basically wasted a bunch of her life pursuing sinful things, but then got saved, and somehow, in God’s providence, started going to Don’s church. My sister had no idea who he was. I have no idea, still to this day, why that was the place she selected; there were other churches around. But she started going there.

Then my sister got a massive brain tumor and went into the hospital and basically never got out of bed again. But because she had professed faith a few months before that and had started going to the church, she really wanted to get baptized. And so he actually, in the hospital room — my family was there, in a hospital in Cincinnati — he went out of his way to graciously baptize my sister with her hand in a thing of water, because my sister weighed over 300 pounds and couldn’t really move around. He very graciously made an exception. As Baptist people, we don’t just — we baptize the whole person, we’re not sprinkling them. But he was flexible and gracious in baptizing her hand under water as symbolic of the rest of her body, and continued to care for her while she was in that hospital.

So: great in terms of personal shepherding care. And also very representative of “that’s what the gospel is for” — not any kind of cultural, let alone political, let alone really even educational thing. The only things you really need to study are Bible things.

As opposed to: well, what does Jesus care about? And if he cares about it, aren’t we allowed to care about it? In fact, if he cares about it, aren’t we supposed to care more about it? That would actually indicate that everything he made is something he cares about — including politics, including who we vote for or don’t vote for, who we partner with or don’t partner with. If it’s true that Jesus doesn’t care about it at all, then we can still decide if we want to or not; it’s not bad. Otherwise we have to prove that he doesn’t care about it, and therefore we’re in sin to care about it. Or, third: he does care about it, and therefore we should learn what he wants from us in those places.

And the number, like you’re saying, of pastors who behave like Jesus says — but there isn’t any place where he says, “No, I’m not interested in the president thinking I’m Lord.” “No, I’m not interested in the culture acknowledging who I am by name.” Jesus doesn’t say that. He actually says the opposite of that. So pastors ironically missing what Jesus cares about is a pretty big deal.

Philip So Joey, being in some of those circles — from The Master’s Seminary and the different community that’s out of that — why do you think a lot of that community rejects this kind of approach to thinking about the lordship of Christ? Rejects, whether explicitly or maybe just in their own lifestyle, this kind of sphere sovereignty or common grace, that the lordship of Christ applies to every sphere in life? What is it there that makes it normal, I guess, to reject that?

Sean Yeah, like all those isms. The pietists would have said they were arguing from the Bible. The political Anabaptists would have said they were basing their decisions off of the Bible. So what would you say is the way they missed reading what they claimed was their source of authority?

Joey Yeah, there’s a lot that I’ve found that goes into that. “Emphasis, not exclusion” is a big one — when something’s emphasized, it doesn’t mean other things are excluded.

A lot of it has to do with wrong thinking. I did find it interesting, when I was in seminary, that in chapel they had a series on hermeneutics and New Testament priority and Christ-centered hermeneutics, because that was becoming a big thing at the time. One thing I’ve noticed is that there is a sense of New Testament priority that’s kind of crept in, where the Old Testament — and I like the way Bahnsen says it, that it should be called the Older Testament, because when you say “old,” it does something in your head, where it’s like, okay, it’s obsolete, it’s not there anymore.

So that’s maybe undergirding it. Anabaptism in there for sure. And then that comes across into how they understand the law: the validity, the extent, and the use of the law.

I was reading through — I picked up this book on Anabaptists, by Anabaptists, like “this is the rich history we have and this is the theology we have,” to get it from their mouths. And I found it interesting that in some of their older confessions from the late 1500s, 1600s, they have a really good understanding of the church, and they have a really good understanding of the state. But what they don’t get is the individual Christian and his role in those.

So they say the state should be bearing the sword. Absolutely. But because of their misunderstanding of the Sermon on the Mount, they’re saying we shouldn’t be involved in that in any way, because we are not allowed to do violence. So while we have church discipline, that’s what we do. There’s this separation, separating out from the state — you’re not even allowed to be a magistrate, because you might have to do violence to someone, because that’s the role of the state. You might have to bear the sword, and Christians aren’t allowed to bear the sword.

You see some of that coming out in a lot of what people are saying today. When you ask most people from TMS that I’ve talked with, “Do you know what the three uses of the law are?” they go, “Yeah — civil, moral, ceremonial.” And you go, no, that’s not the three uses, that’s a threefold division of the law. We could talk about that later. I’m talking about the three uses of the law: civil, evangelistic, and normative, or however you want to label it. That it’s a rule to restrain sin in society — it’s the law that God has given, it’s a good law. And then it’s used as a tutor to lead us to Christ. And then it’s also used as a way unto life.

Which is why, if you listen to Pastor John’s sermons on the Psalms, sometimes when it talks about “oh how I love your law” — he does a great job preaching through that. He doesn’t run it back through that dispensational Anabaptist grid of “what is the law now in the church age?”

And I think also, when you look at the New Testament, you’ve got a new institution coming — the church starts in Acts 2. So you’ve got this new institution coming. It’s going to need more revelation and more direction, so that we know what it is, how it’s supposed to operate, what its structure is. That’s “emphasis, not exclusion” in a macro sense of Scripture.

God’s already told us about the family. He’s already given us rules for justice and for mercy and what all of that looks like. So he’s not replacing things — he’s adding to. Here’s another institution. The family’s going to remain. The state is still going to be there. But the church is new, and so it’s going to need a lot of extra attention. And I think if we miss that, we will fall into a lot of error.

Sean Yeah. Our image-bearing mandate responsibilities are human-on-earth-during-this-time responsibilities. Not just “we’re waiting for the rapture so we can get off of this place.”

Sin obviously has messed all that up, but the good things that God keeps declaring about what he made are not things that Christianity is changing. They’re things that Christianity allows us to get back to actually appreciating, rather than serving as gods — or being fearful of as gods, like they’re going to ruin us. So creation and work are not actually going to become our idols as Christians. They’re actually, as Christians, things we can use to glorify God.

I have thought of it as epistolary evangelicalism — that is, evangelicalism where we’re only reading the epistles. And MacArthur, his unspoken — in my own understanding, I would say God used MacArthur to build two walls of my theological room, which are basically both “what does the Bible say” and “what does the Bible say.” The Bible is the authority, the Bible is sufficient. Figure out what the Bible says. Go to the Bible, read the Bible, preach the Bible, let God use the Bible to do things. So I love God’s use of John MacArthur as an example of that.

And also, his example was that the New Testament had priority — which does sound like somebody else’s hermeneutic of New Testament priority. And I’m not mad at what he did or what he didn’t do. It’s just: okay, well, that same word, as we’ve learned to keep reading it, does actually have, like you’re saying, more than just instructions for how to behave in the church.

Joey Yeah. And if we’re really going to hold to the principles that were recovered in the Reformation, like semper reformanda — one of the criticisms we have for a lot of these people that are confessional is that when you read a lot of the Westminsterian guys, what you find is that sometimes there’s a whole chasm of different views that they explain, and then they go, “Okay, now let me show you how this doesn’t go against Westminster.” And it’s like — so what if it does? In certain areas, right, it’s not Scripture. And they would say it’s not Scripture, but they kind of act like it is.

There’s the MacArthurite kind of thing where it’s like, “Well, Pastor John didn’t say that, he taught it this way.” But if we’re saying we’re going to be faithful to Christ and faithful to his word, and even faithful to Pastor John, what we should do is take all of the good he’s given us, the bulwark we’ve been entrusted with, and then advance it. That’s what we should be doing.

Sean He would want us to read the Bible, not him.

Joey Yeah. We all have this, right? We want our kids to grow and to be more mature and to be better than us in every area they can be. We aid them in that.

And one of the things you mentioned there reminded me — there’s a whole bunch of little things. You know how God reveals certain things to you at certain times, and there are certain pieces, certain aspects of theology, and one clicks, and then it’s a prerequisite for understanding something else, and for something else.

Understanding conscience, freedom of conscience, I think was really crucial. Adiaphora, like you were talking about — “this is neither here nor there.” Is ice cream sinful? No, ice cream is not sinful. But then as soon as you have a moral agent engaging with that ice cream, he’s either doing it sinfully or righteously. So there’s gray, but there’s also black and white within that, whenever you have a moral agent engaging with it. That was helpful. Cultural mandate was huge in that. All that within the sufficiency of Scripture.

So when you have people espousing things — we normally hear it in our camp with alcohol. There’s a danger in something, and so we avoid it altogether, cut it out. There’s a ban on this for Christians: if you’re a Christian, you don’t engage with this at all. You’ll hear a lot of sermons from TMS guys. They start out, “Wine is good,” and they explain what Scripture says. And then it’s like, “But look at the dangers, and look at the dangers, and look at the — do you want to be wise? Do you want to be mature? Then you should avoid it altogether.” That’s the retreat aspect. That’s one of the clearest examples, and the one you’ll see most commonly.

But it is coming over. Are there dangers in politics? Are there dangers in co-belligerating with unbelievers in the civil sphere? Absolutely there are dangers. And what I’ve heard Don Green and Jerry Wragg and other people say is: avoid it. What they should be saying — what a faithful pastor in that realm is going to say — is, “No, look: there are real dangers here. This is the mandate you have from Christ. This is what obedience looks like. And so here are the dangers. Now let me encourage you to be courageous and to be faithful in that area, but make sure you’re watching out for these dangers, because they are real dangers.”

Sean Yeah. Instead of deciding “I’m not going to grow up in a particular area” — how about, go ahead and work at growing up and maturing in that area. Do some reading. Take some hits. Figure out what is actually honoring to the Lord with it, as opposed to just hiding. It’s kind of like ostrich theology: I’m just going to bury my head and hope it works out.

I thought your comment about — did you say papism, or papalism? — earlier, as another one of the reasons for some of our problems. I would agree that the sacred/secular divide that the Catholic Church was so famous for has in so many ways been brought into a strain of Protestant thinking, or evangelical thinking, where God cares about the sacred sphere and not the secular sphere. And therefore the people who are in the sacred sphere — pastors, missionaries, theologians — those are the people who are really doing God’s work. And if you want God to really value you, you should do as much of that as you possibly can, or even become a pastor.

And pastors tend to then, just like the Catholic Church did — whether they are meaning it this way or not — use that as an avenue of control. Because they can define what is important in someone’s life or not, as opposed to encouraging that person to go to their job on Monday, or to go run for political office on Monday, and go do that in Jesus’s name. But if I as a pastor tell that guy to go do that on Monday, then I don’t really have control over him anymore. And the Catholic Church didn’t have control either.

Joey Think about what you’re telling people in the pews. You’re telling men: your job, your vocation, is a necessary evil, so I can get money.

Philip Yeah. That’s what it can be. And that’s bad.

It’s specifically very inconsistent coming out of people who are espousing a literal, grammatical, historical hermeneutic. For the Catholic Church, basing a lot of their theology on what Augustine was talking about in the two cities, or two kingdoms, and building it out of that — where there is a certain kind of spiritual kingdom or realm that Jesus is Lord over today, and then the physical world, the material world, that Christ maybe is ruling indirectly, or is not as involved in. From that kind of typological hermeneutic, that approach makes sense. So for a covenantalist, for a Catholic, to live in that kind of secular/sacred divide, I see how that would be consistent.

But for somebody who espouses that literal, grammatical, historical hermeneutic — we are the ones who are saying that God cares about the specificities of dimensions, and the specific dirt, and the actual bloodline. God cares about this world here and now, the physical, material reality of it. And then to go on and say that what we do in this world doesn’t really matter seems very inconsistent. You have to forget everything you believe about your hermeneutic and about your foundation as to how to read the Bible and the conclusions of that. You have to just close your eyes to it in order to be able to say something like that.

So it seems like there are other motivations mixed into all of that. Some people, I do think, maybe are just not thinking it through all the way. They’re not driving it to the right conclusions.

But even, Sean, what you were saying regarding pastors having a harder time controlling their congregants if they say, “Hey, go out into the world and do these things” — well, the pastor’s not an expert in all these fields. So these congregants are going to have to learn how to be excellent, competent businessmen, politicians, artists, scientists, whatever that is, apart from the pastor being able to wave his approval wand over it. And that does require more from that pastor. There’s a certain kind of burden we have to shoulder when we believe that Jesus actually cares about all of these different fields and functions and spheres. Okay — if Jesus actually cares here, then I have to care as well. And that in one sense is liberating, and in another sense it’s harnessing. It harnesses us into the work, to care about it.

One of the quotes you had in your article, Joey, was: “What we need in these perilous times is not an exodus from ordinary callings, but an invasion of them. Not retreat, but advance, in the civil sphere.” I really like that — calling Christians into that civil sphere.

And you had mentioned as well that Christians, or the church, can have a hard time distinguishing the church’s sphere from the Christian’s sphere. The church is composed of Christians, and so the church as an institution, as a sphere, has certain areas that it is responsible for, accountable for, that it has authority over. But then Christians in that church are also, or should be, involved in other spheres — whether that is family, whether that is state. And then within the family, the private sphere, you’ll have business and science and art and all of that as well. So trying to encourage people to go out and be Christians in those spheres, I think, is what more pastors should be doing.

Joey I agree. I think that goes back to the cultural mandate, though. If you don’t understand the cultural mandate, or you’ve just brushed it off as, “okay, that’s gone now,” then you’re hamstringing yourself, and you’re to a certain extent practicing pastoral malpractice with regard to teaching and training your people. Because that’s your job — to equip the saints for the work of ministry. And that’s not just within the church, but within the family and also within society.

One thing that I learned is: you have the cultural mandate at the beginning, and if there’s no fall, the cultural mandate continues, and it continues unchanged. Then you have the fall. So if the goal of the cultural mandate is that the earth would be filled with the knowledge of the glory of Yahweh as the waters cover the sea, the fall makes that much more difficult — because Proverbs talks about how even the plowed ground of the wicked is sin.

In one sense you can say, I’d rather have a neighbor that plows his field and does the work and makes it look nice and doesn’t let the weeds grow, because if those weeds grow up, the wind’s going to blow and it’s going to blow weeds onto my land. But before God, that’s still sinful. So if I’m going to fill the earth with the knowledge of the glory of Yahweh as the waters cover the sea, and I’m going to cultivate and labor — it’s not enough for me just to do it as a natural man. I have to do it as a redeemed man. So you have a redemptive mandate, and you have a cultural mandate.

And what you notice is, there are some people that don’t push the redemptive mandate, and you’d say they’re heartless, because they’re not understanding what’s really at stake here. And then the people that are just pushing the redemptive mandate and not the cultural, they’re blind, because they’re not seeing the program that God has laid out and the goal of all of this.

One thing that we get a lot is, “Just preach the gospel. You’re never going to be able to change society unless you change the hearts of the people.” Which in one sense is true, but by and large it’s not. And what you end up doing is putting yourself in an infinite regress. If I’m discipling somebody and I’m just preaching the gospel and telling that person, “Don’t get involved in any of these other areas, just preach the gospel” — he’s going to do that, and then he’s going to have disciples, and then he’s going to have disciples.

If we have 350 million Christians in this area, that’s a great thing. But if nobody’s actually engaging in the civil sphere, then how are we laboring to make sure that we have a peaceful and quiet life? But they’re not —

Sean — in really great quiet times.

Philip I get what people mean when they say that. But — what is the gospel? The gospel is not just “God saves sinners.” It’s not just the points of soteriology, how we are wicked and God came down and saved us. But to what end?

The gospel is the good news of the kingdom of God, of God’s rule, of the lordship of Christ. It’s not just that God saves sinners; it’s that Jesus is Lord. That is what we are to preach, what we are to herald.

And so if Jesus is Lord, then what is his domain? What is his sphere? What is it that he is sovereign over? Well — all the things. He is not Lord over just my private time with him, or just my meditation. He is not just Lord over the church as an institution. He’s Lord over all of it. All things are his. And so then, if we are in Christ, that means all things are ours.

So “preaching the gospel” — depending on what you mean by that — the way I would hear it is: yes, that is what we want to do. And that incorporates all of it. That includes all of it.

Joey And good works, yeah. Good works are part of the gospel. It’s what flows out of a regenerate heart.

Philip Right. And good works is more than just making converts. Good works is making an excellent steak, running a profitable business, serving customers well, inventing new technology. These are all good works that promote a certain kind of orderly rule of God’s reign, of God’s kingdom.

Joey Yeah. When COVID hit, I wasn’t trained for that, in one sense. But in another sense I was like, okay, well, I know I need to go back to the Bible, and I know what I need to do. The first thing I need to do is define what the church is, and then what’s entrusted to it, what’s its purpose, what’s its function, what are its tools. Then I need to define what the state is from Scripture, and do the same thing. And then I need to compare the two side by side.

That’s really where I started growing into understanding the differences of sphere sovereignty. And then Kuyper was really helpful in speeding that up.

But there isn’t really a definition of the state, when you think about it. It’s an outflow of the family — an outflow of family over time. So when you look at Scripture and you understand family — I found this really helpful in coming alongside people when they’re like, okay, in the civil sphere, should I be doing this or that? It’s like: well, let’s look at it as the family. With respect to the family, how would you approach this?

One of the things Don Green had mentioned in a different post was that there’s no possible blessing from God in linking arms with unbelievers in any realm whatsoever. Think about that — and the emotions are raised with the state thing. So let’s strip it out of the state for a moment. And let’s not put it in the church, because they tend to look at everything just through the sphere of the church. Let’s put it in the family. If I have an unbelieving spouse, I should not be linking arms with my unbelieving spouse in any way whatsoever in that realm? Now what I’m doing is sinning against what God has said.

So you start looking at these things, and then you broaden it out from the family to a multiplicity of families living in one locale with a certain kind of government over them, and you have a state that’s flowing out of that. I found that helpful for thinking through it — because if what Don Green has said is true, the only faithful option is monastic isolation. Just be an ascetic and go out into the desert and write on some scrolls and stuff.

Sean Like Jesus told us to do in the Great Commission: go, all be alone.

Joey And what’s interesting about the Great Commission too is that Jesus doesn’t say “preach the gospel” in that. He doesn’t say “evangelize.” He doesn’t use that Greek verb. He says “make disciples.”

And the words are chosen carefully, we believe, right? Every word is inspired. So why did he say “make disciples” instead of “evangelize”? Because “make disciples” does include evangelism — that’s a step in the process. But the discipleship is actually the goal.

And when you think about Christ being Lord over everything — he says right there, heaven and earth — and you bring in Ephesians 1, which has that same kind of idea at the end of the chapter, you have “emphasis, not exclusion” there. He’s given him as head over all things. He’s given him to the church. So there is a special, unique relationship, obviously, that Christ has with the sphere of the church, that he doesn’t have with the state. But he’s still Lord over the state, and we still have to engage in the state. And then, from the cultural mandate —

Sean Like you said, in that Great Commission of making the disciples: they’re not even just learners or followers, they are obeyers of everything he requires. Not just that they’re thinking good thoughts, or that they’re reading their Bibles and praying — that they are doing that unto being able to obey all the things that they read and that they found.

Joey Yeah. And one of the challenges that comes up — like, Philip, you were talking about this — is that these challenges come up when we start instructing people: yeah, you should be excelling in these areas of your business, and you should be pursuing these different spheres within society, business, economics, science, whatever it is. That takes more work, to understand what obedience looks like now.

It’s not enough for me just to have a few verses memorized. I need to have biblical principles pulled out from Scripture. I have to be skilled in thinking, so that I can have a right observation of reality, and then take that right observation of reality and break it up into: what are its biblical components, and what are the biblical principles that speak to this? And then reconstruct that, so that I can actually walk with prudence and wisdom. That’s hard work.

Philip Right. Because there is a certain kind of Christian who would agree that yes, we should go out into the world and take over in that way — but then how their Christian walk manifests itself in those areas is primarily through opportunities for evangelism and opportunities to demonstrate your ethics.

So, okay: what does it mean to be a Christian businessman? Well, it means to be honest, and to see if you could make converts of your customers and employees. That’s the essence of it. What does it mean to be a Christian artist? Well, to point people to Jesus in some way. And the same in every sphere.

But if Jesus is Lord over business, if Jesus is Lord over art or over science or whatever these other spheres are outside of the church institution, then he cares about the purpose for which those institutions actually exist. The purpose of business is not to make converts. The purpose of business is to serve customers profitably. The purpose of art, again, is not converts. The purpose of science is not that either.

So to be a Christian scientist or a Christian artist, we have to understand what the purpose of this institution is, and then how do I faithfully live out that purpose under the lordship of Christ? If Jesus cares about this thing, then I ought to care about the thing as well — as opposed to using this thing as a means to a different end.

A lot of Christian business people use their customers, exploit their customers, to fund their ministry. Like that’s the best thing they could do with business.

Joey That’s what their pastor does with them, though.

Philip Right. Yeah, that’s true.

And so then it’s like — and this is why, to be frank, a lot of Christian output, Christian production, kind of sucks. Because they don’t really care about the thing itself. They don’t care about the actual thing that I’m doing right now, whether that is serving the customer, or painting this thing, or writing a poem, or writing a screenplay for a movie. Whatever that thing is, it’s just a temporary necessity. I’m really just trying to fund something else, or I’m trying to use this as an opportunity to pull you out of this thing.

Sean Well, like you said, it goes along with a hermeneutic that says this word means something other than what it’s talking about.

Philip Right.

Sean And so my work means something other than what I’m doing in the work. So there is a consistency in how we are reading the Bible: does this actually mean what it says? Does my work actually matter as work, right here, without some other spiritual part to it? Or am I constantly looking at this thing in front of me for what its antitype is — this is the type of the antitype?

And dispies are actually really stinky at being consistent ourselves. At recognizing: oh, wait a second, this thing also matters. Nations matter to God. Fruit matters to God. Wine does actually matter — so, I can’t get drunk, but I can’t just keep calling it good and then say, “but it’s representative of something else.” Or, “I’m afraid, so put that away.”

Philip Well then, maybe putting that in with the co-belligerency and working with unbelievers, or cooperating with unbelievers, in the civil sphere. In my work within the business context, I’m working with unbelieving business people all the time. So is it possible for unbelievers, for their output, to honor God?

I think yes — God is honored with the work of believers or unbelievers when it aligns with truth, goodness, and beauty. That does not mean that that unbeliever will get any credit for it. Without faith it is impossible to please God; God is not pleased with that person. He’s not getting any credit or glory from that. But God is still honored with that.

So, some kind of wicked oil tycoon who is building his oil empire for his own selfish, greedy needs — well, there’s a lot of good that is done with his oil production, his oil output, everything that is being done there. Whether that is jobs being created, or customers being served — all of the products that we get from oil. He’s not thinking about it that way. He’s just out to make a dollar. But God is honored through that good. And then some Christian household is funded, or can put food on the table, because of this greedy businessman’s ambition, and they thank God for it. So God is honored in that way, in spite of some sinful motivations.

So even unbelievers working within the civil sphere — God is still able to be honored through that. Why would we not be able to cooperate with that, if we are also trying to align with truth, goodness, and beauty, and we know the source of it all?

Joey Yeah. Like Titus says, we should be leading in good works. Oh, sorry — what was that?

Sean I can’t remember, from your article, if you brought common grace into the co-belligerency discussion. Obviously if you’ve been reading Kuyper, sphere sovereignty and common grace are two of the biggest things he is known for trying to clarify. So did you talk about common grace? Would you see that as part of the discussion?

Joey Yeah, I’d say that in the civil sphere, common grace is the ground; in the church sphere, saving grace is the ground. There’s a difference there.

One of the examples I brought up was fascinating to me. We think of Romans 3 — there’s none good, no one does good. But then you’re reading through Kings and you come across Jehu. I love Jehu. I’m bummed that he was an idolater, but I love his zeal. His zeal is so infectious, and he’s very shrewd in how he goes about things to get the job done.

Philip It’s kind of like we have our own Jehu in Trump today.

Joey Yeah. And people got upset with me, because I said he’s a messiah — because Cyrus was a messiah, and in that same sense Trump is. And people got all upset. But God ordains leaders, and I think you can get there. I said it in a way that was intended to provoke some thought.

But Jehu — when he dies, and God’s laying it out: okay, he did what was good in the sight of Yahweh. So here you have in Scripture a magistrate doing good in the sight of Yahweh who is not a believer. That was something that was fascinating to see. Our translations usually translate it well, but it’s tov, it’s good. So in God’s eyes, what he did was good.

And to your point, it doesn’t merit anything. It’s not like vertically this is meriting you something. It’s not like a diadem that’s going to go on his crown or anything like that. But horizontally, and before God, and according to common grace, we would say: that’s a good thing.

We have to be able to affirm that unbelievers on a horizontal level can do good things, and that that’s attributed to God’s common grace. So when we are thinking about co-belligerating — yeah: truth, beauty, love. Are they fighting for something that God’s law upholds, that we ought to be fighting for? Then we can temporarily link arms with them. We’re in a foxhole together. At this point, if you want to kill the enemy with me, we’re going to join arms in this. When we get back, I might not let you watch my kids and stuff. But right now, in this battle, this is the fight. You’re in this foxhole with me. We have the same enemy. So let’s fight in that regard.

Philip Yeah — even maybe more so than that. When Jesus says to be innocent as doves and shrewd as serpents, or wise as serpents: in our work of kingdom-building effort, we ought to have strategy. We ought to have tactics. We ought to have a certain kind of plan.

And why not have that strategy include not just linking arms with unbelievers, but using them? In a way where the ultimate mission of truth, goodness, and beauty is the Christian’s mission — it belongs to us, because we are Christ’s. So if we can use unbelievers to achieve that mission, why not do that? That is a good thing to be doing. And they are also trying to build that up in that way.

So if I’m trying to build a great business and I have an unbelieving but smart product development person, why not use that in this effort? That kind of approach, where it’s more than just “we are equals in this” — we’re trying to advance something, and I’m going to use their effort in order to advance this end.

Joey And if we’re thinking through it and being consistent, we all already do that in a number of areas. Even these pastors that are preaching against it, they do that. If you’ve got some kind of medical thing, you go to the best person qualified for it. You don’t go to the most doctrinally sound person. When you’re trying to buy meat or something like that, you’re going, okay, who has the best meat? We do that in all these areas of our life. We’ll live one way and then get up in the pulpit and preach something completely different.

It bothers me, because you’re being inconsistent and you’re leading God’s people astray. Ideally, as Christians, we should be the ones that are leading in every arena and in every sphere. And if somebody has a great idea that comes from natural revelation, we should be able to come alongside and learn from them, and then take that and advance it for the glory of Christ. Now we’re fulfilling the cultural mandate in a way that we ought to.

This is where I found it really helpful to think of structure and direction — you guys have probably studied that a little bit. You’re looking at: okay, what is the structure of this thing? We’re looking at art, or whatever. The structure of it is amoral, so to speak. But the direction that I need to take this is to God’s glory. So how do I step in and take this structure of something in the civil sphere and bring the direction of it toward God’s glory? Which means I’m going to be working heartily as unto the Lord, not as unto men.

It reminded me of Luther, when he was preaching on this, and there was a cobbler who said, “So how am I supposed to do my work for the glory of God as a Christian? Am I supposed to put crosses on all my shoes?” And he said, “No. You make a great quality shoe, and you sell it at a fair price.”

Sean Well, and pastors in particular are missing out on the application that God’s kindness is meant to lead to repentance. So the person makes a great product. That is a kindness that God gave them — the ability and the resources to put that together. So the structure, using even that term, is potentially a little bit different application than you were pointing out. But the structure there is good. That’s kindness from God that’s intended to lead them to repentance, just as if he took away. He gives and takes away — and this is when he gives.

And I have been thinking recently of common grace as God letting an unbeliever live inconsistently with his stated principles. Because the unbeliever’s stated principles are: there’s no God, and all of this is meaningless. So more common grace means he’s living more inconsistently with what he says. And I can recognize that in somebody else, and be able to then partner with them — even though I might, again, not let them watch my kids, because I’m not sure when their inconsistency is going to break. It’s only grace that’s letting them be inconsistent and do anything that is good for them or for other people.

But that increases their accountability to God. It’s not like that’s wasted on them. It’s increasing. They got good from God, and so they owe him honor and thanks for that. And the more good they get — it’s not that they need more pain to point them to God, though obviously he can do that as well. But their successful business, their great invention, their committed relationship to their wife — I mean, that seems more rare than ever these days, that two unbelievers just enjoy getting along together, male and female. But even that is a good thing that can be pointed out to them as a kindness from God, intended to make them accountable so that they would repent and worship him.

And pastors who freak out that other people are getting good things — well, no. They got good things for which they’ve got to answer.

Joey Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely. I was going to call this neo-monasticism, but then I had a friend say, well, there is something coming up that’s already called neo-monasticism. But it is like a neo-Gnostic kind of framework that you’ve got.

And I really do wish that Christians would see this, because we have that opportunity to love our neighbors — which, when we’re co-belligerating, we’re loving our neighbors. I don’t know if you were taught this at TMS, but I was taught that we have to love our neighbor, and — it goes back to emphasis, not exclusion — the best way we can love them is we can give them the gospel. Which I believe is true. But it’s not the only thing we can do to love our neighbor, which is why I highlighted in that article Luke 10, with the parable of the Good Samaritan.

Ironically, Jesus uses a heretic who does good things physically to prove a point to those who are doctrinally sound. He’s showing: okay, which one proved to be a neighbor? The one who showed mercy. And it’s tangible, physical, sacrificial mercy. We’re engaging in this physical sphere with one another.

I think we’ve retreated into the church in a lot of different ways. And we’re just resting on our laurels — “well, it’s all going to burn anyway” — and not properly understanding why God has revealed the future to us. Yeah, it is going to burn. Yeah, Christ is going to come. Yeah, he’s going to rescue his people, he’s going to establish his kingdom. But that’s to give us hope. That’s to give us strength. That’s so that we don’t trust in ourselves.

Pastor Don had mentioned in one post that what’s true of God and wealth is also true of God and politics. And it’s that ambiguous kind of language that is very dangerous. Because in one sense you could say, yeah, amen — what’s true of God and wealth is true of God and anything. But what is true of God and wealth? What are we talking about? Because if you’re likening politics and wealth like that, and saying avoid politics altogether — why don’t you also get rid of all of your wealth too? Or is there a purpose that you can use it for good, and you’re just not supposed to worship it?

Sean How does God think about wealth? He likes it a lot, and is trying to give more of it to his people as blessing, in the right places. So that also would work for politics. He’s going to give good rulers that bless his people — like the dawn, whatever that passage is about leaders in the Old Testament.

Philip Right. Well, that’s why these different spaces — they’re not neutral. There is no neutrality in that. Even a category like art or science: this is a good avenue. The thing itself is morally good, and people pervert it. Satan perverts it. People who hate God pervert that which is good and use it to promote evil in some way.

Same thing with wealth. Wealth is not neutral. It’s not just a neutral tool. It is good, and people use it to do evil with it. So the spaces, the spheres, the tools that God gives us are not, again, just “can be used one way or another.” Under normal circumstances they are good. Without sin, these things are good. It is a blessing. But we can use it toward evil. So in that way, there is no neutrality there.

Joey Yeah. You know, you keep bringing up art. Before I really understood the cultural mandate and everything flowing out of that, and then reading through Schaeffer, art was just kind of, eh. That’s one thing we’ve really lost, I think, because of the mindset of just being so spiritual with everything and losing the physical. I’ve really had much more appreciation for art after reading through Schaeffer and seeing how art changes over time, and how it teaches us things, and how it’s reflective of what’s going on in the culture.

Just as an observation: so many other things come to life. Your labor that you do with your hands — I’m a blue-collar guy. I was a plumber before. It’s encouraging and it’s liberating: I’m serving the Lord and I’m glorifying Christ when I go and show up to a person’s house and they’ve got some issues, and I fix those issues, and I do it at a fair price. I’ve glorified the Lord. I’ve served Christ. Those are the good works that God had prepared for me for that day. It’s not the extent of them, but we have to say those are included in that.

Philip Right, for sure. All right. Well, Joey, thanks so much for being with us here. I think it’s always encouraging and great to talk with people who care about the things that Jesus cares about. And that is what we’re all trying to learn more to do. When the cares of Christ conflict with our cares, our response should be humility and repentance. So we’re all learning toward that, and that’s where we want to make the kind of progress in that faith.

Thanks so much for helping us unpack some more of this. We’ll link to your article, and to the conference coming up in June, and some of your podcasts, so people will know more about what you’re working on.

Joey Thank you. Thank you guys for having me. It’s been a joy.

Philip Yep. All right. We’ll see ya.

Sean Glory.