The Biblical Purpose Of Government

Only two parts of the Bible address the Biblical purpose of government with any thoroughness: the Pentateuch and Romans 13.  The former details exact legal penalties that are morally demanded by certain offenses on the Christian worldview (yes, Christianity is an inherently theonomist religion [1]), while the latter states that a righteous government wields a sword that is to be used for the sake of imposing justice.  Ironically, some attempt to use Romans 13 in arguments against Mosaic Law, as if a morally perfect God--which evangelicals rush to call Yahweh--could prescribe unjust or otherwise flawed punishments!

Paul says that human governments are authorized by God to punish evildoers, but the justice of a given penalty is not revealed or determined by its popularity, deterrence effectiveness, or subjective sense of "rightness."  If murder, rape, and slave trading are universally sinful and deserve to be universally criminalized, it is not as if any punishment at all can be legitimately assigned to them.  A specific sin that God calls a crime can only deserve one response (or, in some cases, one of several potential penalties from a specific set of punishments, as Numbers 35:31 implies is sometimes the case).  If a regime does not deviate from this mandate, it has not erred.

There is no Biblical purpose of government other than carrying out just punishments on those who commit specific sins--that something is sinful does not mean it should have the status of a crime, and only particular punishments can be just for particular crimes.  The state has no right to invent or enforce unjust or unnecessary laws, and far more falls into these two categories than the average conservative or liberal would be comfortable with.  A Biblical system of government, which is hypothetically compatible with various structures like monarchy and autocracy,

Even conservatives, for all of their talk of "small government," would be hypocrites if they rushed to abolish unneeded components of the American government rather than choosing to selectively and slowly phase them out, and liberals would be hypocrites if they embraced any sort of small government whatsoever.  A Biblical government is neither centered around a large emphasis on the military nor built to sustain programs that require unnecessary taxation.  After all, it only takes a small government to impose justice as needed.

It is impossible to rationally argue for political policies which are unnecessary, so there is no sound argument for anything more than a small government as it is.  However, the inability of reason to directly reveal human obligations, including any which govern the acts of the state, leaves Christians without anything to point to as evidence for a given political system other than the Bible--unless they want to go beyond their own worldview into a mirage of conscience-based assumptions.  Since the Biblical conception of government is very limited, there is no such thing as a Biblically valid conservative or liberal government.


[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/05/the-old-covenant.html