“For God is not a God of confusion but of peace. But all things should be done decently and in order.” 1 Corinthians 14:33, 40.
God is a God of Order
When Paul declares that God is not a God of confusion but of peace (1 Cor. 14:33), he is making a theological claim about the nature of God that carries ontological implications. He does not merely argue that order is more effective than disorder; he roots ecclesial practice in divine being. God is not the author of ἀκαταστασία, instability, upheaval, or structural breakdown, but of εἰρήνη. In this context, peace is not psychological serenity but the opposite of congregational chaos. Paul’s concern is rightly ordered worship. Yet his reasoning runs deeper: worship must be conducted decently and in order because it reflects the character of the God who is neither divided nor disordered. Ecclesial order, therefore, is not arbitrary. It is derivative. It mirrors the harmony that belongs eternally to God Himself. Paul’s doxology in Romans 11:36 universalizes divine causality: “For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things.” God is not merely the initiator of reality but its continual sustainer and its ultimate end. Nothing exists autonomously. Not ecclesial order, not familial structure, not civic authority. Each sphere is a derivative reality which was brought into being by divine wisdom, and is upheld by divine power. It is ultimately directed toward divine purposes. To speak of order, therefore, is not merely to speak of arrangement, but of teleology: the right placement of things according to their proper ends. All created orders originate in God, persist through Him, and find their fulfillment in Him. Thus, no sphere operates outside His authority or oversight.
Civil Authority, a Derivative of Divine Wisdom
Civil authority is not a secular sphere detached from God. Scripture teaches that the magistrate is “God’s servant” appointed to restrain evil and preserve civic peace (Rom. 13:1–4). This does not render every exercise of authority infallible, but it does establish that legitimate authority, acting within its God-ordained bounds, participates analogically in divine order. When lawful authority enforces just statutes, it operates within a derivative sphere established by God Himself. The intentional obstruction of such enforcement without moral justification is not merely political dissent, but a disruption of this derivative order. It reflects a refusal to recognize the hierarchy which undergirds civil society by divine wisdom. Because civic authority exists as a mediated expression of God’s ordering of society, to destabilize it without just cause is not merely to contest policy; it is to introduce disorder into what God has structured for the preservation of peace.
Immigration Enforcement and Misdirected Zeal
A Christian worldview cannot treat civil enforcement as morally optional simply because it is politically contentious. Immigration law, like any other law, stands unless it is intrinsically unjust. The mere fact that a law produces hard outcomes does not render it immoral. Borders are not a modern invention; bounded authority is an intricate part of creation itself.
Nations, like families and churches, possess defined jurisdictions and to refuse enforcement categorically is to dissolve the very structure of civic order.
In the recent incidents in Minnesota, federal immigration agents were executing lawful warrants under federal statute. They were not acting autonomously or as vigilantes, but within delegated constitutional authority. Whether popular or unpopular, such enforcement remains an exercise of the magistrate’s God-ordained function to restrain evil and preserve civic order (Rom. 13:1–4). In response, public rhetoric from certain state and local leaders framed non-cooperation and resistance to federal law enforcement as moral virtue. Comparisons of federal agents to oppressive secret police did not merely express policy disagreement. These comments morally delegitimized lawful authority itself. When authority is recast as tyranny by definition, resistance is no longer framed as civil dissent but as existential necessity. What emerged was not simply protest, but obstruction untethered from moral warrant. It was compassion detached from hierarchy, outrage detached from authority, and zeal detached from structure. Augustine reminds us that love is not justified merely because it burns intensely; it must be rightly ordered. When fervor rises above the structures God has appointed for justice and peace, it does not purify the city, it destabilizes it.
A Dangerous Analogy
The Gestapo was not merely a law enforcement body one disagreed with. It was an instrument of totalitarian terror. To invoke that analogy is to imply contemporary agents are not officers executing just statutes within constitutional bounds, but are agents of tyranny to be resisted as a moral duty. It should be clear to see how Gov. Tim Waltz’ rhetoric reshapes moral imagination. If ICE agents are equivalent to secret police, then obstruction becomes resistance and interference is courageous, and defiance in this case is virtuous.
Here, enters disorder.
To be emboldened to commit crimes in the name of “standing up to the feds” reveals a deeper inversion. When private sentiment is elevated above public authority, then passion will supersede structure. Compassion, when detached from justice and lawful process, will become a catalyst for disorder. Augustine’s category of ordo amoris exposes the root problem. Love of neighbor, love of the vulnerable, even love of justice, must remain rightly ordered beneath God’s authority. When love becomes self-authorizing, and grants itself permission to disrupt lawful structures it ceases to be virtue. It becomes misdirected zeal.
This is why obstruction is not legitimate protest. It is disorder cloaked in moral language.
It may appear courageous but where enforcement of just statutes is actively impeded the tranquility of order is fractured. And when citizens are encouraged, whether implicitly or explicitly, to treat that fracture as moral heroism they are being catechized into disordered love.
The issue is not intensity of feeling. The issue is whether our actions honor the derivative authority God has structured into civic life.
