The Throne Above the Thrones
There is a temptation, common to every age and perhaps especially to ours, to read the headlines as though the world were a ship without a pilot. Elections are won and lost, tyrants rise and fall, empires expand and crumble, and the natural eye sees only the churning of human ambition, the clash of armies, and the scheming of men in high places. The believer, however, is given a different vision entirely. Above every throne on earth there is a Throne in heaven, and the One who sits upon it has not abdicated. He governs the governors. He rules the rulers. The kings of the earth imagine themselves to be the highest authority, but there is a King of kings before whom they are as grasshoppers, and not one of them holds his office for a single hour apart from the decree of the Most High.
This is the doctrine of the sovereignty of God in government, and it is woven through the whole of Scripture. It is not a fringe opinion or a debatable inference. It is the plain and repeated testimony of the Word of God, declared by Wisdom in Proverbs, demonstrated in the life of a pagan emperor in Daniel, and commanded as a rule of Christian conduct by the Apostle Paul in Romans. Let us trace it.
Proverbs 8:15–16 — “By Me Kings Reign”
In the eighth chapter of Proverbs, Wisdom is personified and speaks in the first person, and in many places the language rises so high that it can be understood ultimately of Christ Himself, who is made unto us wisdom from God. Wisdom declares:
Notice the sweep of the statement. It is not merely the godly king who reigns by the wisdom of God; it is kings as such. It is not only the righteous judge who holds his bench by divine appointment; it is all the judges of the earth. Whatever lawful authority any ruler possesses, he possesses it as a derived thing, a borrowed thing, a thing granted from above. The magistrate who never bows his knee to God still rules by God’s permission and within God’s bounds. The very capacity to govern — to make law, to render judgment, to wield the sword — flows from the God who is the fountain of all authority. Strip that away and the throne is a chair, the crown a trinket, the decree so much noise. “By me,” says Wisdom, and there is no other source.
Daniel 4 — The Lesson a Proud King Had to Learn
If Proverbs declares the doctrine, the book of Daniel dramatizes it. Nebuchadnezzar, the most powerful man of his age, ruler of the Babylonian empire that had carried Judah into captivity, stood upon the roof of his palace and surveyed the glory of his works. “Is not this great Babylon, that I have built,” he said, “by the might of my power, and for the honour of my majesty?” The words were scarcely out of his mouth when judgment fell. He was driven from men, made to eat grass as an ox, his hair grown like eagles’ feathers and his nails like birds’ claws, until seven times had passed over him — until, as the angelic decree had said, he should know the lesson God meant to teach him:
There is the whole doctrine in a single verse, spoken not to comfort the saints but to humble a king. The Most High ruleth — present, active, continual. He rules in the kingdom of men — not merely in heaven, not merely in the church, but in the realm of earthly politics and human empire. He giveth it to whomsoever he will — the disposing of crowns is His prerogative, not the electorate’s and not the conqueror’s. And most arresting of all, He sometimes setteth up over it the basest of men — meaning that even the elevation of a wicked or unworthy ruler is not outside His government but a part of it, serving ends we may not see.
When at last Nebuchadnezzar’s reason returned to him, the proudest monarch on earth lifted his eyes to heaven and confessed what every ruler must one day confess: that God “doeth according to his will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth: and none can stay his hand, or say unto him, What doest thou?” The man who had thought himself the highest power in the world learned, the hard way, that he was a servant on a short leash.
Romans 13 — The Powers That Be Are Ordained of God
What Proverbs declares and Daniel demonstrates, Paul applies. Writing to believers living under the pagan and often hostile government of imperial Rome — under Nero, no less — the Apostle does not tell them that government is a necessary evil to be endured, nor a human contract to be renegotiated. He grounds civil authority in the ordinance of God:
The magistrate, Paul goes on to say, “is the minister of God to thee for good,” bearing the sword as “a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.” Government, then, is a divine institution with a divine purpose: the restraint of evil and the protection of good. This is why the Christian pays his taxes, honors lawful authority, and lives a quiet and peaceable life. He does so not merely from fear of punishment but, as Paul says, “for conscience sake” — because to despise the ordinance is to despise the One who ordained it.
It must be said plainly that this submission is not absolute and unlimited. When the magistrate commands what God forbids, or forbids what God commands, the believer’s rule is the apostolic one: “We ought to obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29). The midwives of Egypt feared God rather than Pharaoh; Daniel prayed though the king had outlawed it; the apostles preached though the council forbade them. God’s sovereignty over government does not turn the Christian into a tool of tyranny; it sets the conscience free from the fear of men precisely because it places every ruler under a higher Ruler. The same doctrine that commands obedience also limits it.
Proverbs 21:1 — The King’s Heart in the Hand of the LORD
There remains one text that presses the doctrine further than all the others, into the most hidden and seemingly untouchable place of all — the will of the ruler himself. A man may grant that God appoints kings and removes them, that He raises empires and casts them down, and yet suppose that what a ruler chooses from day to day is his own affair, the one citadel of self that no outside power can enter. Solomon closes even that door:
The figure is worth pausing over. A farmer cutting channels in a field does not argue with the water or persuade it; he simply opens a way, and the water runs where he directs it, following the course laid down for it without resistance and without even knowing it is being led. So it is, says the Spirit of God, with the heart of a king. The most powerful man in a nation, whose decisions move armies and shape the lives of millions, has a heart no more able to resist the secret governance of God than a stream can refuse the channel dug for it. And mark the breadth of the words: it is the king’s heart — not merely his actions, which men can constrain, but his very inclinations, desires, and resolves. God does not merely overrule what a ruler does after he has decided; He inclines the deciding itself, and that whithersoever he will.
This does not make the ruler a puppet without responsibility, for Scripture everywhere holds rulers accountable for their deeds. The mystery of how God’s sovereign direction and man’s real responsibility stand together is one we are not asked to solve but to believe, because both are plainly taught. What the verse does give the believer is a quiet and profound comfort: there is no heart so high, so hostile, or so closed that it lies beyond the reach of God’s hand. The Pharaoh who will not let Israel go and the Cyrus who sends them home, the Nebuchadnezzar who burns the temple and the Darius who signs the decree of release — all alike are streams in the field of the great Husbandman, turned whithersoever He will.
The Witness of the Psalms and the Prophets
The theme does not rest on these passages alone; it sounds through the whole of Scripture like a recurring chord. The Psalmist declares, “God is the judge: he putteth down one, and setteth up another” (Psalm 75:7). Through Jeremiah the Lord claims the right to give the kingdoms of the earth to whom He pleases, even handing dominion to Nebuchadnezzar and calling that heathen king “my servant.” Isaiah names Cyrus the Persian as the Lord’s anointed instrument a century and a half before his birth. And the Lord Jesus, standing before Pilate, told the governor to his face: “Thou couldest have no power at all against me, except it were given thee from above.” The man who held Christ’s earthly life in his hands held it only because heaven permitted it.
What This Doctrine Means for the Believer
This is no cold or merely academic truth. It is meant to govern the heart, and it does so in several ways.
First, it gives peace in turbulent times. When wicked men prosper and seem to do as they please, the believer remembers that they are not loose in the world but held in the hand of God, accomplishing — even against their intention — the counsel of His will. No election, coup, or conquest occurs outside His government. The ship has a Pilot after all.
Second, it produces humility in those who hold power and patience in those who do not. The ruler who understands this doctrine knows he will answer to a higher Throne. The subject who understands it is delivered both from the idolatry of trusting in princes and from the despair of fearing them. “Put not your trust in princes,” says the Psalmist, “in whom there is no help.” Our hope was never in a candidate or a crown.
Third, it summons us to prayer rather than mere agitation. Paul exhorts that “supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men; for kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty.” If God turns the king’s heart like a river, then the knee bent in prayer accomplishes more than the fist raised in anger.
And finally, it lifts our eyes to the King who is coming. Every earthly government is temporary, a steward’s arrangement for a passing age. There is One upon whose shoulder the government shall rest forever, of the increase of whose government and peace there shall be no end. The kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign for ever and ever. The doctrine of God’s sovereignty in government is, in the end, the long shadow cast backward by that final and unshakable Kingdom — the assurance that the One who rules the rulers now will one day rule openly, visibly, and without rival.