Back at the Kitchen Table
You’re back at the kitchen table. It’s Sunday again. A week has gone round. The same people. The tea in your favourite mug going cold. The same small talk that’s just run out.
And the conversation turns, the way it always does, to something that matters. Politics. The schools. What’s happening to the country.
And you feel it rising in you again. That word. That principle. That commandment that speaks straight to what’s being said. Same as the very first episode of this series.
But something’s different this time. Last time, something held you back. A quiet voice that said the Bible doesn’t belong here. Not in this conversation. Not in this domain.
This time, you know where that voice came from. You know its name. R2K. And you know it’s a worm-tongued deceiver.
But there’s one last thing standing between you and speaking up. A nagging worry. Because somebody at that table is going to say it.
“You can’t mix religion and politics. Jesus said My kingdom is not of this world. There’s a sacred realm and there’s a secular realm, and you’re trying to smash them together.”
Two kingdoms. One for God. One for the world. It sounds so reasonable. It sounds like maturity. It sounds like keeping the peace.
And here’s the thing. Van Drunen didn’t invent that instinct. He moulded it and gave it form. He took that everyday feeling that faith and public life live in separate rooms, and he built a whole theology to hold it up.
So today we finish the job. Today we answer the last question. If not two kingdoms, then what? Because the Bible does talk about two kingdoms. It just doesn’t draw the line where Van Drunen drew it.
And by the end, you’ll have one sentence. One sentence you can lay on that kitchen table that no two-kingdoms man can answer. Five words long.
My name is Nathan Conkey, with RestoreChristianity.co.uk. And this is Exiles No More.
What This Episode Gives You
Here’s what we lay out. First, the real two kingdoms. The ones Jesus actually named. And you’ll see the line runs in a completely different direction from the one Van Drunen drew.
Second, the one idea that takes the whole R2K system apart. The difference between the structure of a thing and the direction of a thing. Get this, and you’ll never again believe that anything is “naturally secular.”
Third, Abraham Kuyper. The real one. Not the domesticated version Van Drunen quotes. The one who cried that there’s not a single square inch Christ does not claim.
Fourth, the risen Man on the throne. Why the ascension is the single fact that ends the argument. Because there is no version of Christ who stays out of your Monday.
And by the end, you’ll be able to walk back to that kitchen table. And finish the sentence you couldn’t finish the first time.
The Two Kingdoms That Actually Exist
Let me draw Van Drunen’s map one more time, fairly, the way he’d draw it.
He draws a horizontal line across reality. Above the line: the redemptive kingdom. The church. Grace. Scripture. Christ ruling as Mediator. Below the line: the common kingdom. The state. The market. Art. Politics. Your job. Governed by natural law. Christ ruling only as Creator, at a distance, hands off.
Two kingdoms. Stacked. Sacred on top, secular underneath. And the deal is: keep your Bible above the line. Don’t drag it below.
Now let’s open the Bible and see where Jesus draws the line. Matthew chapter twelve, verse twenty-eight. The Pharisees have accused Jesus of casting out demons by Beelzebul, the prince of demons. And Jesus answers with a teaching about kingdoms.
Verse twenty-five. “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation.” Verse twenty-six. “If Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then will his kingdom stand?” Verse twenty-eight. “But if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, surely the kingdom of God has come upon you.”
Count the kingdoms. The kingdom of Satan. The kingdom of God. Two. There it is. Two kingdoms. Right there from the mouth of Christ.
But now look at the line between them. Does it run between the church and the state? Does it run between Sunday and Monday? Does it run between the sacred upstairs and the secular downstairs?
No. It runs between God and Satan. Between light and darkness. Between the kingdom that submits to Christ and the kingdom that’s in rebellion against Him.
Do you see what just happened? The Bible’s two kingdoms are not horizontal. They’re vertical. It’s not a map with sacred zones and secular zones side by side. It’s a war. Top to bottom. Through the middle of everything.
The church can be in the kingdom of Satan, if it’s apostate. A business can be in the kingdom of God, if it’s run for His glory. The line doesn’t run between institutions. It runs through every institution, asking one question. Which king am I serving?
So Van Drunen’s whole framework rests on a line the Bible never draws. He took the two kingdoms of Scripture, which are God’s and Satan’s, and he quietly swapped them for two kingdoms of his own, which are church and world. One is a battle line. The other is a fake fence to forbid your faith from flowering in the five days a week.
So if the line is vertical, not horizontal, then no part of life is “naturally” on the secular side of a fence. Which raises the question that breaks R2K wide open. Is anything in this world born secular? Is the state secular by nature? Is your job secular by nature?
There’s one idea that answers that. And once you’ve seen it, you can’t unsee it.
Structure Versus Direction
Here’s the idea. And I want you to hold a hammer in your mind’s eye while I tell you about it. A hammer.
Pick it up. You can use that hammer to build a house for a widow. Or you can use that same hammer to smash a violinist’s fingers.
Now here’s the question. Is the hammer holy or evil? Neither. The hammer is a tool. It’s a good thing, made for driving nails. What makes it holy or evil is the end towards which you direct it.
Willem Ouweneel, drawing on Dooyeweerd and Wolters, gives you two words that take the whole R2K system apart. Structure. And direction.
Structure is the thing itself. The God-given pattern. The state. The family. The market. The school. The hammer. Direction is which way it’s pointed. Toward God, or away from Him. Holy, or apostate.
Now apply it to Van Drunen. When he says the state belongs to the “common kingdom,” what’s he claiming? He’s claiming the state is secular by nature. That it belongs, by its very structure, to a neutral realm.
But is the state a hammer that’s evil in itself? Or is it a good structure, made by God, that can be pointed at Him or away from Him?
Here’s R2K’s fatal mistake. It confuses structure with direction. It looks at a state that’s currently pointed away from God, a market that’s currently godless, a school that’s currently teaching falsehoods, and it concludes: “Ah. These things are common. These things are secular. These belong to the other kingdom.”
No. They’re not secular by nature. They’re good structures pointed in a bad direction. And the answer to a hammer being used for murder is not to declare hammers secular and hand them all to the murderers. The answer is to take the hammer back, and build the widow’s house.
There is no such thing as a secular sphere. There is no neutral institution. There’s only a creation structure, made good by God, pointed either toward Him or away from Him.
When Van Drunen says the state is “common,” he hasn’t read its nature off the page of Scripture. He’s read it off the morning newspaper. He’s mistaken the current direction of a fallen institution for its God-given structure. And on that one mistake, the entire common kingdom is built.
Kuyper’s Square Inch
Now. Van Drunen likes to claim Abraham Kuyper. He says Kuyper’s idea of separate spheres, family and church and state each with their own authority, leads naturally to a two-kingdoms position.
So let me introduce you to the actual Kuyper. A Reformed theologian. A newspaper editor. The founder of a university. And the Prime Minister of the Netherlands. This was not a man who kept his faith above a line. This was a man who ran a country on it.
And here is the sentence he is famous for. The one Van Drunen never seems to quote in full.
“There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: Mine!”
Read it again. Not a square inch. In the whole domain of human existence. That Christ does not claim.
Now does that sound like two kingdoms? Does that sound like a sacred realm and a separate common realm running on natural law? Does “not one square inch” leave any ground for a common kingdom to stand on? It doesn’t. There’s no square footage left over.
One Kingdom, Many Spheres
Here’s what Kuyper actually taught, and it’s the heart of the positive vision. Not two kingdoms. One kingdom. The kingdom of God. Over absolutely everything.
But that one kingdom is expressed through many spheres. The family. The church. The state. The school. The business. Each one a real sphere, with its own God-given authority, its own job, its own laws.
The state doesn’t run the family. The church doesn’t run the business. None of them swallows the others. That’s the “sovereignty” part. Each sphere answers to God directly in its own lane.
And here’s exactly where Kuyper and Van Drunen part ways. Van Drunen says the common spheres, the state, the market, the school, are governed by natural law. Independent of Christ. Neutral ground. Kuyper says every single sphere is governed by Christ. Directly. With its own God-given norms drawn from His Word and His world.
So it’s not “one kingdom for God, one for natural law.” It’s one King over many rooms in the same house. He rules the kitchen differently from the way He rules the workshop. Different rooms, different rules. But there is no room in the house where He is not the King.
No Christ at a Distance
And there’s a deep reason Van Drunen can’t have it his way. He wants Christ to rule the church as the Mediator, but the common kingdom only as the Creator. As the eternal Word, hands off, at a distance.
But Ouweneel points out the problem. There is no longer a Christ at a distance. The Word became flesh. And the flesh did not evaporate at the ascension. The Man, Jesus of Nazareth, with a real body, with scars in His hands, is sitting at the right hand of God right now.
There is no version of Christ left over who isn’t the incarnate, risen King. So you cannot send a “distant Creator-Word” to govern the common kingdom while the real Christ stays in church. There’s only one Christ. And He’s the King of the whole house.
The Ascension Settled It
Here’s the question that ends the argument. When Christ ascended, what was He doing?
Joe Boot puts it like this. The ascension was not a withdrawal. It was an enthronement. Christ did not go up to take a step back from the world. He went up to take the throne over it. He sat down at the right hand of God. The position of total authority. Over heaven. And over earth.
Not someday. Then. At the ascension. The King took the throne. And from that throne, He poured out His Spirit. On all flesh. To work through His people. In every corner of creation.
So when Van Drunen tells you Christ’s rule over the common kingdom is “eschatologically premature,” a thing we’re still waiting for, ask him this. Is Christ on the throne now, or isn’t He? Does He have all authority now, or doesn’t He? Did the Spirit come now, or hasn’t He?
Because if the King is already enthroned, then His rule over your Monday is not premature. It’s two thousand years overdue for you to act on.
A Political Claim, Not Just a Spiritual One
And this is why Boot calls it a political claim, not just a spiritual one. When the early church said “Jesus is Lord,” Kyrios Christos, they were saying it into a world that said “Caesar is Lord,” Kyrios Kaisar.
Acts four, verse twelve. “There is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” That’s not just a verse about how you get to heaven. It’s a declaration that Caesar is not the ultimate authority.
That’s why they fed the martyrs to the lions. Not because they prayed to a private God in their hearts in their prayer closets. But because they refused to say Caesar was Lord of everything. They already had a Lord of everything.
The Error of Churchism
So here’s the last error to name. Ouweneel calls it churchism. It’s the mistake of squeezing the whole kingdom of God down into the institutional church. As if the kingdom and the church are the same size. They’re not.
The church is the heart of the kingdom. Its primary instrument. The place of Word and sacrament. Precious beyond measure. But the kingdom is bigger than the church. The kingdom is everywhere the King reigns. And the King reigns over the family, the school, the business, the courts, the nation.
R2K is churchism with a sophisticated face. It puts God in the church building, hands the rest of the world to natural law, and calls the arrangement humility.
But an enthroned King does not rule one building. A King with all authority does not govern a single denomination. The risen Man on the throne is Lord of the whole house. And He is calling every room of it home.
What You Do This Week
I’m not going to leave you with a whole new map and no idea where to put your feet. Four things. For this week.
Read Matthew 12 and find the line
Open your Bible. Matthew chapter twelve, verses twenty-two to thirty. Read it slowly. Count the kingdoms. Two. God and Satan. And then trace the line between them. Notice it does not run between the temple and the marketplace. It runs between submission to Christ and rebellion against Him.
You’ll see it for yourself. The line you were taught was horizontal. The line in the text is vertical. And it runs straight through the middle of your own week.
Memorise Kuyper’s square inch
Get the whole sentence if you can. “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: Mine.”
If that’s too long for now, get the core of it. “Not one square inch.” Because that’s the sentence I promised you at the beginning. That’s the one you lay on the kitchen table.
When a man tells you faith and public life live in separate rooms, you don’t argue the politics. You say: “Show me the square inch Christ doesn’t claim.” And watch him try to find it.
Re-label one “secular” thing in your life
Don’t start with the nation this week. Start with the labels in your own head. Where have you quietly filed something under “secular”? Your work. Your money. Your hobby. Your vote. Your business plan.
You’ve stamped it “common kingdom” and you’ve kept the Bible off it. Pick one. And ask the structure-and-direction question. Is this thing secular by nature? Or is it a good structure I’ve been pointing in a neutral direction, when the King is asking me to point it at Him?
Then peel the old label off. And slap the true sticker on. Property of Jesus. Because the prison cell wasn’t just exile. It was a thousand little labels that said “not here, not this, not yours to claim.”
Sit with the next question
We’ve torn down the false map. We’ve built the true one. One kingdom. Many spheres. One King over every room. But that raises an obvious challenge. If Christ rules the state, and the courts, and the marketplace, then by what standard does He rule them? What’s the blueprint?
You can’t just say “Christ is King of the courts” and walk off. The next question is “King by what law?”
Because if we don’t have an answer, then “Christ is Lord of all” becomes a slogan with nothing underneath it. And every man does what’s right in his own eyes, in Jesus’ name.
So this week, open your Bible to Deuteronomy chapter four, verses five to eight. Read what Moses says about God’s law making Israel the envy of the watching nations. “What great nation is there that has such statutes and righteous judgments?”
Because next, we pick up the blueprint. The law of God. Not as a burden. As the architecture of a free and just society. And we’ll find out what Christendom actually built when it dared to use it.
Not One Square Inch
Let me leave you with this. Van Drunen gave you two kingdoms so he could hand one of them to Caesar. But there are only ever two kingdoms in the Bible. And the line between them doesn’t run between Sunday and Monday. It runs between Christ and anti-Christ.
And over every square inch on both sides of that line, the risen Man on the throne is still shouting one word. Mine.
Your church. Mine. Your business. Mine. Your Monday morning. Mine. Not one inch left over for the common kingdom.
So go back to that kitchen table. And this time, when the moment comes. Say it.
I’m Nathan Conkey, with RestoreChristianity.co.uk. This is Exiles No More. If this helped you, share it with one other man who needs to hear it.