I am writing this article in the week in which the Western Church has traditionally remembered the account in Matthew's Gospel of the Magi (or 'wise men') coming to worship the infant Jesus. Even in our increasingly secular Western society many people are still familiar with the story of the coming of the wise men, not least through their appearance on Christmas cards and in nativity plays in which they are depicted by children wearing cardboard crowns and cloaks made out of old curtains.

However, what most people, including most Christians, do not realise is that Matthew's account of the coming of the wise men (Matthew 2:1-12) and his linked account of King Herod's attempt to kill the infant Jesus (Matthew 2:13-23) are concerned with the political power of God and the corresponding limitation of human political power.

The adjective 'political' refers to things which have to do with the exercise of government. Thus, a political party is a group of people who share a particular set of convictions about how government should be exercised, while a political platform is a statement about how government will be exercised, and a political correspondent is someone who reports on how government is exercised.

According to the Bible, although government is exercised by human beings, the one who exercises supreme governmental authority is God himself. He is the king over the whole world (indeed over the whole universe) and there are no limits to the exercise of his governing power.

This is the point that is made, for instance, by the Psalmist in Psalm (97:1-5):

"The Lord reigns; let the earth rejoice;
let the many coastlands be glad!
Clouds and thick darkness are round about him;
righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne.
Fire goes before him,
and burns up his adversaries round about.
His lightnings lighten the world;
the earth sees and trembles.
The mountains melt like wax before the Lord,
before the Lord of all the earth."

The imagery used in these verses emphasises the power of God's exercise of government. In Hebrew thought, mountains are paramount symbols of strength and durability and yet they 'melt like wax' before the power exercised by God. However, these verses also tell us that God's exercise of governing power is not arbitrary. God reigns with 'righteousness and justice' or, in other words, God acts in power to ensure that things are as they should be.

If we ask how God does this, the message that the Bible gives us is that the way that God acts to ensure that things are as they should be in the face of human sin and the activity of evil supernatural powers opposed to God, is by coming in person as a king descended from the Israelite King David to rule over the world and set humanity and the whole created order to rights. This is what is promised, for example, in Isaiah 9:2-7 where the coming king's descent from David is expressed by saying that he comes from the 'stump of Jesse' (Jesse being King David's father):

"There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse,
 and a branch shall grow out of his roots.
 And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him,
 the spirit of wisdom and understanding,
 the spirit of counsel and might,
 the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.
 And his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.

"He shall not judge by what his eyes see,
 or decide by what his ears hear;
 but with righteousness he shall judge the poor,
 and decide with equity for the meek of the earth;
 and he shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth,
 and with the breath of his lips he shall slay the wicked.
 Righteousness shall be the girdle of his waist,
 and faithfulness the girdle of his loins.

"The wolf shall dwell with the lamb,
 and the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
 and the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
 their young shall lie down together;
 and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
 The sucking child shall play over the hole of the asp,
 and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder's den.
 They shall not hurt or destroy
 in all my holy mountain;
 for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord
 as the waters cover the sea."

In the verse following this prediction, Isaiah then further goes on to say that, "In that day the root of Jesse shall stand as an ensign to the nations; him shall the nations seek, and his dwelling will be glorious" (Isaiah 11:10). In other words, God's divine glory will be revealed in the person of the promised king and people from all nations will come to seek him out.

Matthew's account of the coming of the Magi in Matthew 2:1-12 is concerned with the first beginning of the fulfilment of the promises made in Isaiah.

In Matthew chapter 1 Matthew sets out Jesus' descent from the line of David and explains that he will be 'Emmanuel' – God with us, meaning not simply that God will be on our side, but that in Jesus God himself will be personally present.

In chapter 2 Matthew then describes how Magi from the East, guided by a star, come to seek out Jesus as the first fulfilment of the promise made in Isaiah 11:10: "Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, saying, "Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we have seen his star in the East, and have come to worship him" (Matthew 2:1-2).

Just in case we have missed the point, Matthew then goes on to describe how Jesus' birth in Bethlehem fulfils the prophecy in Micah 5:2 that God promised that the king, 'Christ', would come from Bethlehem, the hometown of David (Matthew 2:3-6).

He then further describes how when the Magi came to Bethlehem and found the infant Jesus, they not only offered him gifts but "fell down and worshipped him" (Matthew 2:11). As theologian Richard Hays notes, by recording their worship Matthew is reiterating the point that Jesus is not only a human king, but the divine king, "nothing less than the embodied presence of Israel's God, the one to whom alone worship is due".

By contrast to the actions of the Magi in seeking out Jesus and worshipping him, Matthew also recounts the fear of, and hostility towards, Jesus exercised by Herod, the Roman appointed king of Judea. Like the Magi, Herod seeks to discover the place where Jesus has been born and is now living , but only so that he can kill him (Matthew 2:3-18). The point is that Herod can only see kingship as a zero-sum game. Either Herod is king of the Jews or Jesus is. They cannot both be king and so Jesus has to die.

However, as Matthew goes on to record, although Herod exercises his political power by attempting to kill Jesus by means of slaughtering all the children two or under in the Bethlehem area, what Christian tradition has come to call the 'massacre of the innocents' (Matthew 2:16-18), he fails to achieve his goal. Just as Pharaoh in the Old Testament story of the Exodus failed to kill the infant Moses, so Herod, the new Pharaoh, fails to kill Jesus.

Jesus' father Joseph is warned of Herod's intention by God in a dream and takes Jesus and his mother Mary to live in safety in Egypt until Herod himself dies (Matthew 2:13-15, 19-20). All that Herod's malice manages to achieve is the fulfilment of the prophecy of Hosea 11:1, "Out of Egypt have I called my son" (Matthew 2:15).

What lessons should we draw from all this?

First, that contrary to what may seem to be the case, political authority in this world is not ultimately exercised by those with human political power, such as the British Prime Minister or the Presidents of the United States, Russia and China, or the Supreme Leader of Iran.

Political authority ultimately belongs to God, and as he promised he would, he exercises this authority through Jesus Christ, the Son of God and Son of David, born in Bethlehem, who will rule over this world until it comes to an end and he "delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power", that is, all forces that exist in opposition to the just and righteous purposes of God (1 Corinthians 15:24).

Secondly, that since this is the case, the wise thing for all human beings in all nations to do is recognise that Jesus possesses 'all authority in heaven and earth' and to follow the good example of the Magi by coming to Jesus, worshipping him as God, getting baptised and living in obedience to his commandments (Matthew 28:18-20).

Acting in this way does not involve rebellion against earthly rulers, rather it means living in subjection to them as those who are God's servants called to punish evil and reward goodness (Romans 13:1-7). However, it also involves recognising that earthly rulers only have penultimate authority and that when they command things that are contrary to Jesus' commandments, the right thing to do is to refuse to obey them and bear the consequences: "We must obey God rather than men" (Acts 5:29).

Thirdly, because Jesus has ultimate divine authority, human political rulers need to heed the warning issued to them Psalm 2, a Psalm which is a prediction of the coming rule of Jesus as God's chosen king:

"Now therefore, O kings, be wise;
 be warned, O rulers of the earth.
 Serve the Lord with fear,
 with trembling kiss his feet.
 lest he be angry, and you perish in the way;
 for his wrath is quickly kindled" (Psalm 2:10-11).

Like Herod, those humans with political power, whether kings, presidents, prime ministers, or those with some other form of governmental authority, can rebel against God. God has allowed them the freedom to do this. However, if they do, while they may cause great harm as Herod did, they cannot ultimately derail God's good purposes (contrary to Herod's plans, Jesus lived while Herod died) and even if they escape judgement for their misdeeds in this world, they will have to answer to God for them at the last judgement.

As the Psalmist indicates, the wise thing for rulers to do is therefore to acknowledge God's authority and act in obedience to his will, and the calling of Christians who do not possess political power is to remind rulers of this fact.

Martin Davie is a lay Anglican theologian and Associate Tutor in Doctrine at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford.