CrossTalk: Blessed Is the Nation Whose God Is the LORD

America’s Declaration of Independence depends on the truth that “all men are created equal.” Saturday, July 4th, celebrates its 250^th anniversary.

To say that all people are created is to say that there is a creator. This observation is so obvious as to be “self-evident.” Every person who ever lived knows that he or she did not appear spontaneously but came from another.

That creator is usually referred to as God. The Declaration refers to him as “Nature’s God” who wrote the “Laws of Nature.”

What the Declaration does not do is to define or describe who the God of Nature is. Christians regularly assume that Nature’s God is Jesus Christ. And they are not wrong.

But, for Thomas Jefferson—and the signers of the Declaration—it was enough to acknowledge that every person, tribe and nation is answerable to a common creator. Because of this, no person has an inherent right to rule another. Hence, all are equal.

Nations that fail to acknowledge this fact quickly devolve into tyranny, murder and chaos. That’s what happened in Revolutionary France and in the now defunct Soviet Union.

In fact, the 1954 Congress amended the Pledge of Allegiance in response to Soviet atheism. On Flag Day, President Eisenhower signed the bill behind the phrase, “one nation, under God.”

It is a good thing that we acknowledge a common creator. But it is an even better thing to know that Creator to be the Triune God. 

Because to know the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit as One God is to know the Creator as the God who suffered, died and rose again for the sins of His creatures.

King David said, “Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD” (Psalm 33:12). This is not meaningless repetition. To say that God is the LORD is to confess that the Triune God of Holy Scripture—not Zeus, not Isis, not Molech, not Thor—is the God who created heaven and earth.

And the Bible goes on to teach us “that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:11). Jesus is the eternal Son of the eternal Father who with the Holy Spirit created all things. This same God redeemed you by His suffering and death on the cross and is the author and source of the one true faith.

And any nation whose God is this God will be a blessed nation.

David, of course, knows that nations as nations cannot have personal faith. Only people can do that. But David also knew that every decision that rules a nation is made by people who either believe that “God is the LORD” or not.

What David might not have foreseen is a nation that was not ruled by a hereditary king but by the people themselves. And that brings us back to America’s 250th anniversary.

Governments instituted among men are more or less godly as the people are more or less godly. Elected officialdom is more or less godly as the individuals elected to office govern their own lives under the one true God.

As we celebrate the 250th anniversary of America, let us first submit our own lives to the Word of the one true God. Then, let us be bold to bring that faith to bear on all that we say and do to discharge our duties as godly citizens of the United States of America.

This nation, too, can be blessed whose God is the LORD.