The Queen Is Dead. Long Live the King

I appreciated Kevin Schaal’s post yesterday in response to the death of Queen Elizabeth II, Queen of Antigua and Barbuda, Australia, The Bahamas, Belize, Canada, Grenada, Jamaica, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, and the United Kingdom.

That’s quite a list, but it diminished through her reign, as she oversaw the decolonizing period of British history. Some of her former realms opted for republican government. When India made that decision in 1948, India wanted to maintain a relationship to the crown through what is now called the Commonwealth of Nations. The Queen was head of the Commonwealth, and her son, King Charles III is her successor.

I surprised myself by my own reaction to the Queen’s passing. I am a subject of the Crown (a Canadian), but I am not overly monarchical in my outlook. When asked about my political views, I describe myself as a “republican” (note the small “r”). As we’ve watched the Royal Family through the years, there are plenty of incidents that haven’t served to garner overwhelming loyalty and respect, to be sure.

Yet when the Queen passed, I couldn’t help it — there was a real sense of loss. (Despite her family, she has retained the respect of her people.) I listened to many podcasts celebrating her life story, both from American and British personalities. One of them played “God Save the Queen” at the end. I sang along, until I got choked up.

When our government immediately moved to proclaim Charles as King of Canada, I felt a sense of pride in the continuity he represents, satisfaction in the stability these events proclaim about our nation.

When we saw our Royal Canadian Mounted Police leading the funeral procession yesterday, we felt pleased with that symbolism. She was our queen, too. Charles is our king. We happen to share them with fourteen other nations, but they belong to us as much as they belong to Britain.

These sentiments are tied up in what the Queen (and now the King) represents. The monarch of Canada (and all those others) embodies the sovereignty of the state. Final authority resides in them. A Wikipedia article on the Monarchy of Canada puts it this way: “the Crown today primarily functions as a guarantor of continuous and stable governance and a nonpartisan safeguard against abuse of power.” Embodied in the monarch is the state.

How to explain this? Americans organize their polity differently than we do. The American system rests on popular sovereignty where citizens, by their votes, allow their representatives to exercise political authority. The people are kings, in a sense. A monarchy is organized in a different way. The crown is sovereign, and the crown (the monarch) grants freedoms to its peoples as it sees fit. A constitutional monarchy combines the organizing principles, where some level of popular sovereignty limits or curtails the absolute authority of the sovereign, but there remains a real ultimate authority in the crown.

I sound like a textbook! And my purpose isn’t to educate you on the differences between the political concepts, just to note that they are real. In our system in Canada, the devolution of power is from the top down, whereas in the USA, the authority to exercise power is granted from the bottom up. That’s the theory.

However, here is what I want to say about all this: why is it that through most of history, most people have had kings ruling them? Notable experiments in some form of democracy arose at various times, and I think the American republic is the supreme example, in which its people have the most freedom of any people in history.

The Roman Republic ousted its kings a long time and endured, expanding its empire, for a couple hundred years. Yet it ended in monarchy. Various powerful individuals took advantage of situations that led to the breakdown of the Roman Republic and morphed into the Roman Empire. The Romans tried democracy, but they could not hold it. The same is true of many other attempts through history.

By default, or by might, Kings reign. This is the norm in human history. Could it be that this is the norm because God designed men to rule, but under a Ruler, that is, under God himself? Indeed, we Christians understand God as our Ruler, and we expect the Lord Jesus Christ to rule himself, on the earth, as the Bible says.

Hebrews 2.8 says, “Thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet. For in that he put all in subjection under him, he left nothing that is not put under him. But now we see not yet all things put under him.”

The first phrase, “Thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet,” is a quotation from Psalm 8.6. The author of Hebrews points out that “all things” means all things, and “he left nothing that is not put under him.” The Lord Jesus is King. Of everything.

There is one caveat, however, “But now we see not yet all things put under him.” Our king, Jesus, has the authority, but has not come into his kingdom, as yet.

Let’s think about all those kingdoms through time and around the world today. Sometimes they aren’t called kingdoms, but no doubt they are ruled by a king, by whatever name he is called (see Russia and Putin). We live in an age where there are many democracies, some are constitutional monarchies with limited royal prerogatives. Why is that that men have turned to this course, as opposed to the rule of kings?

Because the kings that rule now (or in history) are fallen men. Some have abused their people, so severely restricting them that the people took the law into their own hands and overthrew their kings or insisted their king’s power be curtailed.

What would it be like if Jesus really did have all things put under him, right now? Well, democracy would be over for one thing. And we would have a righteous and perfect ruler, so it wouldn’t be so bad! He really would own everything. We would be glad to have it so.

Back to the death of my queen, and the ascension of my king. Why am I moved? Partly because the stability of the country I live in depends on the peaceful transference of sovereignty.

But even more so because it makes me long for the True King, of whom these kings play only a typical part, representing the kind of world our God created, with men living and serving under his Sovereignty. As types, they are only a shadow, often very, very imperfect, of the king who is coming.

Thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet. For in that he put all in subjection under him, he left nothing that is not put under him. But now we see not yet all things put under him.

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Don Johnson is the pastor of Grace Baptist Church of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada.

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