Stand at the Gates: A Call to Christian Manhood
Rob Pacienza
Our God loves the sojourner, and his Word commands his people to show compassion, mercy, and justice toward the foreigner. Citing these commands, well-intentioned, Christians contend that the Bible requires the church to oppose enforcing immigration law. In doing so, they fail to understand the distinction between the roles of church and state.
While the church is called to love and serve the foreigner in their midst, governments are ordained by God to uphold justice, establish order, and restrain evil (Rom. 13:1-4). The Christian can and should support the enforcement of immigration laws—not in contradiction to our faith, but as a faithful expression of it.
The Bible commands God’s people to love the sojourner (Deut. 10:19). We are not permitted to oppress the foreigner (Zech. 7:9-10). We must welcome the stranger (Lev. 19:33-34). We should maintain a posture of compassion toward the disadvantaged.
The same Bible specifies that a nation is “defined by its borders” (Num. 34:2). The New Testament declares that God “determined…the boundaries” of nations (Acts 17:26). Borders are not human inventions; they are God-ordained tools necessary to promote order and civilization. Even the heavenly city is described with unassailable border walls and an open gate that is accessible only to those whose names are found in the Lamb’s Book of Life (Rev. 21:12-27).
The same God, who demanded compassion for the foreigners, also required a rigorous process of assimilation for any foreigner seeking to become an Israelite. This required far more than simply walking across a boundary marker. New citizens were required to be circumcised (Gen. 17:27); they were required to affirm and abide by the laws of Israel (Lev. 24:22); and they were required to swear off any appalling customs of their homelands (Lev. 18:26).
Foreigners were not permitted to permanently own land in Israel without being a citizen. In fact, God’s Law required properties to be returned to Israelites every fifty years (Lev. 25:10), so they could maintain control of their ancestral land allotments (Num. 36:7). The process of assimilating new citizens was careful and often multi-generational. Foreigners from hostile nations were not permitted full privileges of citizenship until the third generation (Deut. 23:3).
These commands, requiring both compassion and order, were not contradictory. However, they do require clear distinctions between the responsibilities of individual believers and the responsibilities of the state. In God’s economy, the church is responsible for providing compassion to immigrants, widows, orphans, and the poor, just as the state is responsible for restraining evil and establishing an orderly society.
Borders are not human inventions; they are God-ordained tools necessary to promote order and civilization.
Consistently conflating the duties of church and state would yield tragic consequences. When Jesus commanded believers to turn the other cheek, he was not calling for police officers to turn a blind eye to burglaries or to ignore incidents of domestic violence. In those cases, authentically loving our neighbors requires the state to restrain such evils. When Jesus commanded the disciples not to judge others, he was not calling for an abolition of judiciaries. When he told his disciples to put their swords away, he did not expect Christians to demand the dismantling of our nation’s military. In a fallen world, this would only invite evil to befall the nation’s citizens, and the state is obligated to restrain such evils.
Likewise, our immigration laws were designed to restrain evil and promote order.
The United States is not an enemy of immigrants. According to the United Nations, “The USA remained by far the largest country of destination of international migrants with 51 million migrants in 2020.” We have welcomed more than three times as many migrants as the world’s second most popular destination (Germany). This has been growing, not slowing. In 2022, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that foreign-born residents accounted for 13.8 percent of the U.S. population—a threefold increase since 1970.
This is not a debate over whether the country should welcome immigrants who follow the law. The current controversy involves whether Christians should support securing our nation’s borders, enforcing our laws, and deporting those who enter the country unlawfully.
To answer these questions, we should examine how the recent incentivized acceleration of illegal immigration has produced extremely dangerous and destabilizing effects upon our nation. This failure of our government to maintain order has yielded deadly results that are the antithesis of love for both immigrants and citizens.
In 2023, the United Nations reported that “the United States-Mexico border is the world’s deadliest land route for migrants.” In 2019, a congressional committee found “credible reports that female parents of minor children have been raped, that many migrants are robbed, and that they and their children are held hostage and extorted for money.” Between 2019 and 2023, border agents apprehended more than 448,000 unaccompanied minors. ICE reported to Congress that it “was not able to account for the location of all unaccompanied children.”
The failure to enforce immigration laws has also resulted in the deaths of American citizens. Mexican cartels, exploiting this lawlessness, have flooded our nation with drugs. Of the more than 107,000 overdose deaths in 2023, the CDC reports that more than three-quarters of those deaths were attributed to fentanyl and opioids (81,083). The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration claims that “one kilogram of fentanyl has the potential to kill 500,000 people.” The California National Guard seized more than 62,000 pounds of fentanyl at the border in 2023 alone—an increase of 1,066 percent in only two years. This is enough fentanyl to kill 14 billion people.
Immigration laws are also in place to protect Americans from criminal elements seeking to exploit our nation. When those laws are ignored, Americans suffer. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency reported that criminal convictions inside the United States involving illegal immigrants skyrocketed between 2020 and 2023—with crimes like assault, battery, domestic violence, DUI, burglary, robbery, fraud each climbing more than 500 percent. Convictions of illegal immigrants for homicide and manslaughter were up 867 percent. Allowing this is not compassionate.
According to a letter from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency to Congress, there were 425,431 non-detained foreigners on their rolls who had been convicted of crimes in their countries of origin but were released into our country, including 25,272 illegal immigrants convicted of sex crimes and another 13,099 convicted of homicide.
Is it more loving for Christians to enable this chaos or to enable the state to restrain it and restore order? The right answer is obvious.
This article is not opposed to immigration. Lawful immigration is necessary for America’s prosperity. However, it is right and godly to support our government’s enforcement of immigration laws.
Of course, the enforcement of our laws must be carried out with concern for each person’s dignity. Most people who cross our borders illegally are driven by desperation or complex circumstances. That does not justify lawbreaking or excuse them from consequences, but it should shape our posture toward them as fellow image-bearers of God during any legal process.
It is not ungodly for our nation to enforce immigration law. Christians can care for the stranger and affirm the state’s duty to uphold the law. Real love for our neighbors demands both.
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