The Gospel Is a Political Message
How much should we let politics shape our churches? Many Christians feel a real ambivalence about this question.
On the one hand, with such hostility around politics in the broader culture, we have to fight desperately to stay united as a church. Why threaten our unity with disagreements about who we are voting for, especially when such disagreements are so emotionally charged?
But on the other hand, shouldn’t Christians and the church have important contributions to the political debate? If we believe that Jesus is Lord of all of life, doesn’t that include politics? Politics deeply affect people’s lives. Shouldn’t we care about our neighbors and our nation?
The starting place for this whole discussion is for Christians to deeply internalize the fundamentally political nature of the gospel. The question should not be, “How can we fit politics into the life of the church?” The deeper question is, “Why do we not realize that everything the church does is emphatically political?”
For most people, “the gospel is political” immediately evokes the political debates of the left and the right in American culture. Please, don’t hear that. The gospel is political because it is the announcement of a king and a kingdom. Being a Christian means declaring, “Jesus is Lord.” Though the Greek word for “lord,” kurios, was used in the Old Testament for God himself, it was also Caesar’s title in the Roman empire. The Christian confession has a double meaning: “Jesus is the God of Israel in the Old Testament,” and “Jesus is the true king of the world, not Caesar.”
That is why we say the gospel is a political message. There is a king, a kingdom, a citizenship. The gospel is not primarily about people’s private spiritual lives. It is about the true king of the world who has been given all authority in heaven and on earth. The gospel is not about another world where we go when we die. It is about that other world invading this world and transforming every part of it, including the political realm of every nation. “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever” (Rev. 11:15).
Jesus' kingdom is of course very different from all the kingdoms of this world. It doesn’t announce the kind of political message we expect. In his kingdom the humble are exalted and the merciful are blessed, neither of which are qualities we see in the world’s politics.
But it must be emphasized that we are not talking about a “purely spiritual” king, or kingdom, or citizenship. If you are a baptized, believing Christian, you are a citizen of a nation whose citizens are both in heaven and on earth, who live on every continent, and speak almost every language on the planet. We have a written constitution (the Bible) by which our King governs and rules.
The multinational quality of the kingdom of Jesus makes it impossible to equate it with the mission of America—a heresy frequently endorsed by American political leaders throughout history. America has many great qualities, but it isn’t the glory we should fix our eyes on (Jesus is), nor is it the city on a hill that is a light to the nations (Jesus’ disciples are).
Because Jesus’ kingdom is inherently political, the church is a political organization. The Greek word for church (ekklesia) was a political word in the ancient world. It meant a civic assembly. That is why a church service and a Trump or Bernie Sanders rally have so many similarities. It is a gathering of people who are there because of their faith in their leader, and they want to hear him speak to them about his policies and inspire them about his vision for the nation. The people respond with chanting and praise for the leader. Everyone feels a powerful sense of unity around their common beliefs and mission. Jesus holds a weekly political rally in every nation on earth when Christians come to church every Lord’s Day.
So has Jesus started a third political party in our system? Democrats, Republicans, and Christians? Absolutely not. Jesus is Lord of lords and King of kings. All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to him; he doesn’t compete on everyone else’s level for power and influence. Political leaders would have no power unless it was given them from above.
In light of all this, what is our relationship to American politics? The Bible offers two helpful analogies: we are settlers and ambassadors.
Settlers and ambassadors are both citizens of one country who bring their native political status with them into a foreign land, occupying an outpost of their homeland within the borders of the new land. For example, Philippi was a Roman colony in the ancient world. Even though the Philippians lived in Macedonia, their political allegiance and citizenship were in Rome. Rome wanted to extend its rule and cultural influence by planting these citizens in other cities around the Mediterranean.
The Apostle Paul knew the Philippian Christians would understand this and so called them “citizens of heaven” (Phil. 4:20). Jesus too was extending his rule and cultural influence, not from Rome to Macedonia, but from heaven to earth. Just as Philippi was a Roman colony, the church at Philippi was a heavenly colony. Christians were settlers bringing the culture of the heavenly kingdom into the earth.
Similarly, Paul calls himself an ambassador for Christ (2 Cor. 5:20). Ambassadors live in foreign countries but always represent the interests of their homeland. They must build bridges with the foreign leaders and find ways to ally with them to achieve common goals. But ambassadors must always keep their ultimate allegiances to their homeland.
Christians in America are ambassadors, too. There are American leaders of every creed who we can align with to achieve common goals, but ultimately Christians are foreigners and represent different sovereignties with different values. We might find allies in the political left or right, but we must maintain a critical distance even with these allies. The left and right (politically speaking) are both “the world” and the church is not of the world.
The key to faithful engagement in politics is keeping our allegiances properly ordered. We believe above all things that there is only one King who can fix this broken world: Jesus. Our supreme and deepest allegiance is to him and his kingdom. This doesn’t mean we can’t have allies or other allegiances, but we must never allow them to compete with our deepest allegiance to our Lord.
How can we test where our deepest political allegiances lie? Here are some diagnostic questions.
Which kingdom are you more passionate about—the multiethnic nation of the global church, or the future of America promised by our political leaders?
Which do you talk about more—the policies and vision for Jesus’ nation building, or the policies and vision of our American political leaders? “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.”
Who do you feel a deeper solidarity with, those who share your allegiance to Jesus or those who share your allegiance to an American political leader? If you feel closer to a non-Christian who shares your political beliefs than a Christian who doesn’t, that is a signal that something is off.
The gospel says that the most important quality of our political life is the devotion of our hearts. If we have given more allegiance to an American political vision than the kingdom vision of our Savior, this is idolatry. The American church will never be able to wisely engage in the political debate of our nation while our hearts are filled with idols.
The first step for every Christian is to repent of our political idols and profess from the heart, “Jesus Christ alone is Lord.”
