Like so many who proof text, you left out the next verse: ” O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?
I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin. ”

Christ in us has regenerated us so that through the Spirit of God, we triumph over or depraved thoughts and desires and are able to be God’s instruments on earth - “I myself serve the law of God!!!

BTW, I have read Piper. I think we already showed his confusion of two different concepts in my first post. Read the two books I suggested and see how you can be transformed from a hand wringer to an instrument of God while you still walk the earth, brother!

A book I recommend to you is Desiring God by John Piper. desiringgod.org

Kern

You have a unBiblical pessimistic presuppositional view of Scripture. You improperly view the future of the Kingdom of God on earth based on what you pessimistically see now. Two books that will help you get started on the road of being a useful instrument in God’s hands now on earth:

That You May Prosper
http://s155777461.onlinehome.us/docs/21f6_47e.htm

He Shall Have Dominion
http://s155777461.onlinehome.us/docs/2202_47e.htm

Bon appetit!

My point exactly. All governments will only get worse. Man cannot and will not be controlled by Christian principles. There will be a remnant that will guided by Christian principles but not many. Good example is Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived and he wondered from Christian principles.

Kern

This is what happens when you have a nation’s government that is grounded in non-Christian principles:

“China on Tuesday executed the former head of its food and drug watchdog who had become a symbol of the country’s wide-ranging problems on product safety.”

Read the whole article and see how oppressive China’s government where the punishment does not fit the crime. I don’t have to mention Islamic countries as well, do I?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/09/AR2007070900689_pf.html

But Christian exiles are not passive. We do not smirk at the misery or the merrymaking of immoral culture. We weep. Or we should. This is my main point: being exiles does not mean being cynical. It does not mean being indifferent or uninvolved. The salt of the earth does not mock rotting meat. Where it can, it saves and seasons. And where it can’t, it weeps. And the light of the world does not withdraw, saying “good riddance” to godless darkness. It labors to illuminate. But not dominate.

Being Christian exiles in American culture does not end our influence; it takes the swagger out of it. We don’t get cranky that our country has been taken away. We don’t whine about the triumphs of evil. We are not hardened with anger. We understand. This is not new. This was the way it was in the beginning –- Antioch, Corinth, Athens, Rome. The Empire was not just degenerate, it was deadly. For three explosive centuries Christians paid for their Christ-exalting joy with blood. Many still do. More will.

It never occurred to those early exiles that they should rant about the ubiquity of secular humanism. The Imperial words were still ringing in their ears: “You will be hated by all for my name’s sake. But the one who endures to the end will be saved” (Mark 13:13). This was a time for indomitable joy and unwavering ministries of mercy.

Yes, it was a time for influence –- as it is now. But not with huffing and puffing as if to reclaim our lost laws. Rather with tears and persuasion and perseverance, knowing that the folly of racism, and the exploitation of the poor, and the de-Godding of education, and the horror of abortion, and the collapse of heterosexual marriage, are the tragic death-tremors of joy, not the victory of the left or the right.

The greatness of Christian exiles is not success but service. Whether we win or lose, we witness to the way of truth and beauty and joy. We don’t own culture, and we don’t rule it. We serve it with brokenhearted joy and longsuffering mercy, for the good of man and the glory of Jesus Christ.

Our Founding Fathers, on the other hand, promoted and established something quite the opposite. The supreme power in this nation was held by the individual States, not the federal government. As our federal government has centralized the money, all the power has followed. The Church in this nation was included not as linked to the federal government (What would’ve been the point? The power was not centralized there anyway!) but as an organic living part of every aspect of society, informing not just legislation and public policy, but all aspects of culture.

As we, the people of the Church, have abdicated our posts in politics, in business, in education, in entertainment, etc., and focused on trying to build our own subculture instead, we have left this country to those who had other agendae. May God forgive us and may He help us undo what we have done!

Certainly none of us should trust in a government — quite the opposite, the government has been entrusted to us!

I’m not certain what you’re promoting, Kern, but it appears that you hold the opinion that the Church should be centralized and attempt to combat the trend toward “civic idolatry” from that position. If that is the case, I would strongly disagree and argue that instead it is time for the Church to awaken to its power as “salt” and “light.” We do not need “Christian collective bargaining,” we simply need to walk in demonstration of the power which has already been committed to us!

The famed Harry Emerson Fosdick thundered from the pulpit of New York’s Riverside Church against the encroaching and seductive influence of what many have termed “civic idolatry”:

Millions today, some in this country and many elsewhere, are taking that attitude toward the absolute, nationalistic state. It is a substitute religion. It has its dogmas, its rituals, its symbols and its sacraments. At the heart of it is this tremendous matter: the utter devotion of millions of souls to the nationalistic god. Where do you think that substitute god will bring us out? He will tear our world into bloody pieces and make our children’s earth a hell.