Can we keep it?

“With liberty and justice for all,” America’s promise of freely pursuing a happy life still stands. It stands as a beacon of hope to those who seek to exercise and enjoy these unalienable rights endowed to them by their Creator. It stands as a torchlight drawing the huddled masses yearning to breathe free.

But let us be assured that such a promise can only be kept when those living in its light live right.

The whole idea of America rests upon “we the people” embracing and embodying the fundamental values that gave birth to this nation, nurtured its growth, and inspired its greatness – the values grounded upon the teaching of Scripture.

If you have a chance to read Eric Metaxas’ enlightening book, “If You Can Keep It,” please do. The whole premise of the work flows from a short conversation that took place in the summer of 1787. Emerging from a room in Philadelphia’s Independence Hall on the last day of the Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin was approached by a Mrs. Powell who shot her question directly: “Well, doctor, what have we got? A republic or a monarchy?”

Franklin answered succinctly, “A republic, madam – if you can keep it.”

If you can keep it. If this nation would rise, if this nation would prosper, if this nation would truly be a “more perfect union,” then it would wholly depend upon the people to self-govern according to the principles of God’s Word.

John Adams said it this way: “The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity.”

Andrew Jackson said: “That book [the Bible], sir, is the bedrock on which our republic rests.”

And George Washington: “The propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right, which Heaven itself has ordained.”

We are a nation upon which God has shed His grace because He is gracious and because He blesses those who seek Him.

But we are in grave danger today. In our ongoing quest for freedom and justice to prevail, we have neglected the weightier matter of righteousness. We have forgotten God – or better said, we have rejected God – and our individual and corporate sins prevent the promise of “Blessings of Liberty” from reaching its fulfillment.

“Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a disgrace to any people” (Proverbs 14:34).

Now is the time to repent and return to righteousness. We need to recognize our sin as sin against a holy God, and confess that we have forsaken the way of the Lord in favor of indulging our ungodly appetites for greed, sexual immorality, impurity, power, strife, violence, drunkenness, and all kinds of evil which we’ve substituted for good.

We need to come to Jesus, without whom we will not be saved from the wrath of God to come upon the sons of disobedience. We need to “renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age,” (Titus 2:12), as His mercy and grace and love lead our hearts to Him in humility, gratitude, and obedience.

And we need to walk in the life-transforming power of the Holy Spirit, by faith, according to the truth of God’s Word, apart from whom we cannot please God.

Will we keep the promise of America? May God have mercy.