I’m writing this text within the week by which the Western Church has traditionally remembered the account in Matthew’s Gospel of the Magi (or ‘clever men’) coming to worship the infant Jesus. Even in our increasingly secular Western society many individuals are still acquainted with the story of the approaching of the clever men, not least through their appearance on Christmas cards and in nativity plays by which they’re depicted by children wearing cardboard crowns and cloaks made out of old curtains.
However, what most individuals, including most Christians, don’t realise is that Matthew’s account of the approaching of the clever men (Matthew 2:1-12) and his linked account of King Herod’s try and kill the infant Jesus (Matthew 2:13-23) are concerned with the political power of God and the corresponding limitation of human political power.
The adjective ‘political’ refers to things which must do with the exercise of presidency. Thus, a political party is a gaggle of people that share a specific set of convictions about how government must be exercised, while a political platform is an announcement about how government shall be exercised, and a political correspondent is someone who reports on how government is exercised.
According to the Bible, although government is exercised by human beings, the one who exercises supreme governmental authority is God himself. He is the king over the entire world (indeed over the entire universe) and there aren’t any limits to the exercise of his governing power.
This is the purpose that’s made, as an example, by the Psalmist in Psalm (97:1-5):
“The Lord reigns; let the earth rejoice;
let the various coastlands be glad!
Clouds and thick darkness are round about him;
righteousness and justice are the muse of his throne.
Fire goes before him,
and burns up his adversaries round about.
His lightnings lighten the world;
the earth sees and trembles.
The mountains melt like wax before the Lord,
before the Lord of all of the earth.”
The imagery utilized in these verses emphasises the ability of God’s exercise of presidency. In Hebrew thought, mountains are paramount symbols of strength and sturdiness and yet they ‘melt like wax’ before the ability exercised by God. However, these verses also tell us that God’s exercise of governing power shouldn’t be arbitrary. God reigns with ‘righteousness and justice’ or, in other words, God acts in power to make sure that things are as they must be.
If we ask how God does this, the message that the Bible gives us is that the best way that God acts to make sure that things are as they must be within the face of human sin and the activity of evil supernatural powers against God, is by coming in person as a king descended from the Israelite King David to rule over the world and set humanity and the entire created order to rights. This is what’s promised, for instance, in Isaiah 9:2-7 where the approaching king’s descent from David is expressed by saying that he comes from the ‘stump of Jesse’ (Jesse being King David’s father):
“There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse,
 and a branch shall grow out of his roots.
 And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him,
 the spirit of wisdom and understanding,
 the spirit of counsel and might,
 the spirit of data and the fear of the Lord.
 And his delight shall be within the fear of the Lord.
“He shall not judge by what his eyes see,
 or determine by what his ears hear;
 but with righteousness he shall judge the poor,
 and judge with equity for the meek of the earth;
 and he shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth,
 and with the breath of his lips he shall slay the wicked.
 Righteousness shall be the girdle of his waist,
 and faithfulness the girdle of his loins.
“The wolf shall dwell with the lamb,
 and the leopard shall lie down with the child,
 and the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
 their young shall lie down together;
 and the lion shall eat straw just like the ox.
 The sucking child shall play over the opening of the asp,
 and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder’s den.
 They shall not hurt or destroy
 in all my holy mountain;
 for the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the Lord
 because the waters cover the ocean.”
In the verse following this prediction, Isaiah then further goes on to say that, “In that day the foundation of Jesse shall stand as an ensign to the nations; him shall the nations seek, and his dwelling shall be glorious” (Isaiah 11:10). In other words, God’s divine glory shall be revealed within the person of the promised king and folks from all nations will come to hunt him out.
Matthew’s account of the approaching of the Magi in Matthew 2:1-12 is anxious with the primary starting of the fulfilment of the guarantees made in Isaiah.
In Matthew chapter 1 Matthew sets out Jesus’ descent from the road of David and explains that he shall be ‘Emmanuel’ – God with us, meaning not simply that God shall be on our side, but that in Jesus God himself shall be personally present.
In chapter 2 Matthew then describes how Magi from the East, guided by a star, come to search out Jesus as the primary fulfilment of the promise made in Isaiah 11:10: “Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the times of Herod the king, behold, clever men from the East got here to Jerusalem, saying, “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we have now seen his star within the East, and have come to worship him” (Matthew 2:1-2).
Just in case we have now missed the purpose, Matthew then goes on to explain how Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem fulfils the prophecy in Micah 5:2 that God promised that the king, ‘Christ’, would come from Bethlehem, the hometown of David (Matthew 2:3-6).
He then further describes how when the Magi got here to Bethlehem and located the infant Jesus, they not only offered him gifts but “fell down and worshipped him” (Matthew 2:11). As theologian Richard Hays notes, by recording their worship Matthew is reiterating the purpose that Jesus shouldn’t be only a human king, however the divine king, “nothing lower than the embodied presence of Israel’s God, the one to whom alone worship is due”.
By contrast to the actions of the Magi in looking for out Jesus and worshipping him, Matthew also recounts the fear of, and hostility towards, Jesus exercised by Herod, the Roman appointed king of Judea. Like the Magi, Herod seeks to find the place where Jesus has been born and is now living , but only in order that he can kill him (Matthew 2:3-18). The point is that Herod can only see kingship as a zero-sum game. Either Herod is king of the Jews or Jesus is. They cannot each be king and so Jesus has to die.
However, as Matthew goes on to record, although Herod exercises his political power by attempting to kill Jesus via slaughtering all the kids two or under within the Bethlehem area, what Christian tradition has come to call the ‘massacre of the innocents’ (Matthew 2:16-18), he fails to realize his goal. Just as Pharaoh within the Old Testament story of the Exodus did not kill the infant Moses, so Herod, the brand new Pharaoh, fails to kill Jesus.
Jesus’ father Joseph is warned of Herod’s intention by God in a dream and takes Jesus and his mother Mary to live in safety in Egypt until Herod himself dies (Matthew 2:13-15, 19-20). All that Herod’s malice manages to realize is the fulfilment of the prophecy of Hosea 11:1, “Out of Egypt have I called my son” (Matthew 2:15).
What lessons should we draw from all this?
First, that contrary to what could appear to be the case, political authority on this world shouldn’t be ultimately exercised by those with human political power, comparable to the British Prime Minister or the Presidents of the United States, Russia and China, or the Supreme Leader of Iran.
Political authority ultimately belongs to God, and as he promised he would, he exercises this authority through Jesus Christ, the Son of God and Son of David, born in Bethlehem, who will rule over this world until it involves an end and he “delivers the dominion to God the Father after destroying every rule and each authority and power”, that’s, all forces that exist in opposition to the just and righteous purposes of God (1 Corinthians 15:24).
Secondly, that since that is the case, the clever thing for all human beings in all nations to do is recognise that Jesus possesses ‘all authority in heaven and earth’ and to follow the great example of the Magi by coming to Jesus, worshipping him as God, getting baptised and living in obedience to his commandments (Matthew 28:18-20).
Acting in this manner doesn’t involve rebel against earthly rulers, moderately it means living in subjection to them as those that are God’s servants called to punish evil and reward goodness (Romans 13:1-7). However, it also involves recognising that earthly rulers only have penultimate authority and that once they command things which are contrary to Jesus’ commandments, the correct thing to do is to refuse to obey them and bear the results: “We must obey God moderately than men” (Acts 5:29).
Thirdly, because Jesus has ultimate divine authority, human political rulers have to heed the warning issued to them Psalm 2, a Psalm which is a prediction of the approaching rule of Jesus as God’s chosen king:
“Now subsequently, O kings, be clever;
 be warned, O rulers of the earth.
 Serve the Lord with fear,
 with trembling kiss his feet.
 lest he be offended, and also you perish in the best way;
 for his wrath is quickly kindled” (Psalm 2:10-11).
Like Herod, those humans with political power, whether kings, presidents, prime ministers, or those with another type of governmental authority, can rebel against God. God has allowed them the liberty to do that. However, in the event that they do, while they could cause great harm as Herod did, they can not ultimately derail God’s good purposes (contrary to Herod’s plans, Jesus lived while Herod died) and even in the event that they escape judgement for his or her misdeeds on this world, they’ll must answer to God for them on the last judgement.
As the Psalmist indicates, the clever thing for rulers to do is subsequently to acknowledge God’s authority and act in obedience to his will, and the calling of Christians who don’t possess political power is to remind rulers of this fact.
Martin Davie is a lay Anglican theologian and Associate Tutor in Doctrine at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford.
