It’s Tuesday, the near side of Hump Day, and the “mostly peaceful” rioting and burning from the “mostly peaceful” street-clogging peacefully protesting protesters continues apace. In utopian paradises across the country police cars and civic buildings burn, cops are wounded and protesters are shot and run over as they try to stop innocent motorists traveling in 2,000 lbs. of glass, steel and vulcanized rubber. But other than those “mostly peaceful” developments, it’s positively dreamy!

While inhaling the smoke of distant fires, we’re also told it’s very, very dangerous to be without a mask when around others because you could inhale or exhale the Peking Lung Pox. In fact, Governor Nuisance (D-Prog) of the Left Coast idyll of Califorlornia decided that, in addition to bars, zoos, museums and gyms, all houses of worship must be shut down indefinitely. This was after he and his virus management team determined that churches must “discontinue singing and chanting activities and limit indoor attendance to 25% of building capacity or a maximum of 100 attendees, whichever is lower.”

I’ve written about this previously, citing Doug Wilson who notes that in Presbyterian polity, “the civil magistrate had no authority in sacred things (in sacris), but he had definite authority surrounding sacred things (circa sacra).” Based on the governor’s recent mandate, however, John MacArthur and the elders of Grace Community Church have taken it a step further and determined that Gov. Nuisance shutting down the church has, in fact, violated the limits of his authority.

In his blog post, “Christ, not Caesar, Is Head of the Church,” MacArthur declares that,

[I]n response to the recent state order requiring churches in California to limit or suspend all meetings indefinitely, we, the pastors and elders of Grace Community Church, respectfully inform our civic leaders that they have exceeded their legitimate jurisdiction, and faithfulness to Christ prohibits us from observing the restrictions they want to impose on our corporate worship services.

He carefully lays out GCC’s biblical support for not following the mandate. In the very next paragraph, he writes,

Said another way, it has never been the prerogative of civil government to order, modify, forbid, or mandate worship. When, how, and how often the church worships is not subject to Caesar. Caesar himself is subject to God. Jesus affirmed that principle when He told Pilate, “You would have no authority over Me, unless it had been given you from above” (John 19:11). And because Christ is head of the church, ecclesiastical matters pertain to His Kingdom, not Caesar’s. Jesus drew a stark distinction between those two kingdoms when He said, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (Mark 12:17). Our Lord Himself always rendered to Caesar what was Caesar’s, but He never offered to Caesar what belongs solely to God. [Emphasis mine.]

In other words, while Christ is Lord over both the Church and civic governments, the earth’s lords, mayors, governors, ministers and presidents have no authority over the Church, and the Church has no authority over the civic authorities. It’s also interesting that MacArthur explicitly underscores that this decision is not grounded in the U.S. Constitution.

Notice that we are not making a constitutional argument, even though the First Amendment of the United States Constitution expressly affirms this principle in its opening words: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The right we are appealing to was not created by the Constitution. It is one of those unalienable rights granted solely by God, who ordained human government and establishes both the extent and the limitations of the state’s authority (Romans 13:1–7). Our argument therefore is purposely not grounded in the First Amendment; it is based on the same biblical principles that the Amendment itself is founded upon. The exercise of true religion is a divine duty given to men and women created in God’s image (Genesis 1:26–27; Acts 4:18–20; 5:29; cf. Matthew 22:16–22). In other words, freedom of worship is a command of God, not a privilege granted by the state. [Emphasis mine.]

This is a carefully reasoned and argued declaration. The main difference between Douglas Wilson’s and John MacArthur’s arguments is that where Wilson says that, “when it comes to questions of public safety (which is exactly what this is), preachers need to stay in their lane” without qualification, MacArthur says that the state has no authority to shut down the church, even if the Church chooses “to abstain from the assembly of saints temporarily in the face of illness or an imminent threat to public health.” The decision remains the Church’s.

In other words, once we morph from a voluntary and temporary suspension of meeting in cooperation with the state—which does not have the biblical authority to require us to do so—into an involuntary and indefinite suspension enforced by the state, we must then declare that the state has exceeded its authority by mandating our cooperation. We can volunteer to cooperate, but we cannot be “voluntold” to cooperate.

We should be praying for Grace Community Church and their leadership, along with thousands of other churches which are deciding what they will do. If they decide to defy the governor’s orders, it will be very instructive to see how the authorities respond, and may provide a glimpse of what the Church could be in for if the “mostly peaceful” protests continue to devolve into anarchy.