How does the Revolutionary War reconcile with “Christian citizenship”?

This transcript has been adapted from the attached audio. It may not be in its final form and may be updated.

You have to render unto God the things that are God’s and unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s. I believe you have an obligation to obey the law until in conscience you cannot.

It’s interesting that if you read the Declaration of Independence, they spend about three quarters of the Declaration explaining why the British crown no longer has the right to the obedience of the American people—that they have forfeited the right of a legitimate government. They formed a new government, and it is the new government that then authorizes the calling of an army to defend the new government.

So our forefathers did not assert a private right to rebel against the crown. They asserted that, based upon their understanding of the British common law and their understanding of inalienable rights, that the civil magistrate had forfeited the right to their obedience. They then instituted a new government, which they then pledged obedience to.

I’m holding here in my hand the Declaration of Independence, and the Preamble says,

“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God entitled them … ”

They believed in government of the people, by the people and for the people:

“a decent respect of the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to that separation.”

Then, after they make a declaration of rights, they give a bill of indictment, which is 28 paragraphs detailing why the king is no longer fit to be the civil magistrate and why they are instituting a new civil magistrate. So they did not assert the right of private rebellion.