Politics, Patriotism, and the Pulpit
00:00:00.000 | And we are back again for another week and for another Fourth of July on this podcast.
00:00:14.560 | I think it's the fourth time an episode has landed square on the holiday, at least our
00:00:19.720 | fourth.
00:00:20.720 | So happy Independence Day for those of you here in the States.
00:00:23.760 | If the inbox is any indicator, questions over politics and patriotism in the pulpit are
00:00:29.960 | perennial concerns for you all listening.
00:00:33.560 | When better then to broach the topic than on a day like today?
00:00:36.600 | Jameson, a pastor in Virginia, writes in to ask this.
00:00:40.320 | Pastor John, hello and thank you for this podcast.
00:00:43.160 | I admire your approach to politics and patriotism.
00:00:45.800 | You seem to be very careful here, even when the heat is turned up in election times and
00:00:51.080 | pastors feel social pressure to endorse specific candidates, you notoriously refrain from participating.
00:00:58.720 | As you have watched this impulse in American Christian life for many decades, this impulse
00:01:03.560 | among Christian leaders to periodically endorse candidates and to get involved in politics,
00:01:08.800 | what observations have you drawn from your decades of refraining?
00:01:14.640 | Maybe the most important or helpful thing that I can do in response to this question
00:01:20.720 | is to point to passages of Scripture that capture the emphasis I think is needed, not
00:01:28.720 | just in the American church, but in the global church, the church around the world, because
00:01:36.240 | the tendency to confuse and combine Christian identity and its earthly expression, the church,
00:01:45.120 | the tendency to confuse and combine Christian identity with political identity, ethnic identity,
00:01:54.920 | national identity, or any other earthly identity, that conflating tendency is so strong and
00:02:04.680 | I think so destructive to the radical call of the gospel that it needs steadfast resistance
00:02:13.800 | generation after generation.
00:02:16.480 | So my burden is to join forces with the Bible, as I understand it, and millions of faithful
00:02:25.800 | Christians to encourage and nurture a faithful Christian identity that will survive and thrive
00:02:36.160 | with faith and hope and joy and love and purity, whether America survives or Brazil survives
00:02:43.040 | or Britain survives or China survives or Russia survives or India survives or not.
00:02:50.000 | So let me point to six kinds of passages that shape my passions in that direction.
00:02:59.560 | Number one, Jesus said to Pilate, "My kingdom is not of this world.
00:03:04.980 | If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would be fighting that I might not be delivered
00:03:10.780 | over to the Jews, but my kingdom is not from the world," John 18:36, from which I infer
00:03:21.320 | we better be very, very careful before we undertake any processes that involve force
00:03:31.040 | or coercion to put the kingdom of Christ in place.
00:03:36.160 | Any identity that we can put in place by force or weapon or law is not the kingdom of Christ.
00:03:48.000 | In this age, King Jesus is creating a people a very different way.
00:03:54.740 | That's number one.
00:03:55.740 | Number two, Paul said in Colossians 1:13, "God has delivered us from the domain of darkness
00:04:03.780 | and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved son."
00:04:09.900 | And again, Colossians 3, 1, "You have been raised with Christ.
00:04:16.200 | Seek the things that are above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.
00:04:20.260 | Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on the earth, for you have
00:04:24.220 | died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
00:04:28.240 | When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you will appear with him in glory."
00:04:33.220 | So our most fundamental and defining identity and location is the kingdom of Christ, not
00:04:42.460 | any kingdom on earth.
00:04:44.580 | It is the right hand of God, not the right hand of any earthly power.
00:04:50.340 | Our most essential life is Christ, and only when he comes will we be openly known for
00:04:59.780 | who we really are.
00:05:01.980 | Number three, Philippians 3.20, "Our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior,
00:05:11.060 | the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body
00:05:15.820 | by the power that enables him to subject all things to himself."
00:05:20.420 | So no earthly citizenship, whether American or Russian or Chinese, has any ultimate allegiance
00:05:30.460 | of those who are in Christ Jesus.
00:05:33.060 | Our political allegiances are to Jesus.
00:05:36.900 | No party, no nation, no ethnicity, no ideology has any ultimate claim on us.
00:05:43.540 | Our decisive constitution is the word of God and no human document.
00:05:50.940 | Number four, Peter says in 1 Peter 2.9, "You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy
00:05:59.540 | nation, a people for his own possession that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who
00:06:05.540 | called you out of darkness into his marvelous light."
00:06:10.140 | These are ethnically and politically shattering words.
00:06:16.540 | Born-again Christians, real Christians, are a chosen race, genos eclecton, a holy nation,
00:06:26.940 | ethnos hogion.
00:06:29.380 | The kind of human we are and the kind of nation we belong to is not any longer our essential
00:06:39.340 | identity.
00:06:42.000 | We are a new kind, a new nation.
00:06:46.940 | None of the existing human realities, ethnic or national, is God's chosen and holy people.
00:06:56.460 | Christians are a new thing, a new reality, a new people, a new nation, a new ethnicity
00:07:03.460 | and race, and we should bear witness to it.
00:07:07.820 | Number five, therefore, Peter says in 1 Peter 2.11, "Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and
00:07:17.900 | exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh that wage war against your soul."
00:07:24.740 | Christians are not first Americans or Canadians or British or Russian or Nigerian.
00:07:31.820 | In every nation, we are exiles.
00:07:35.340 | Let that sink in.
00:07:36.340 | I want to scream that from the top of the buildings to every nationalistic tendency.
00:07:42.580 | In every nation, we are exiles.
00:07:45.660 | Jesus said, "If you were of the world, the world would love its own, but because you
00:07:50.780 | are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you."
00:07:56.060 | John 15, 19.
00:07:58.300 | If you are going to run for office, be sure to inform your constituency that you are a
00:08:04.300 | resident alien.
00:08:07.560 | Your primary citizenship and allegiance are the kingdom of Christ.
00:08:14.660 | Number six, Peter said in 1 Peter 2.13-16, "Be subject for the Lord's sake to every human
00:08:22.220 | institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme or to governors as sent by him
00:08:28.860 | to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good, for this is the will of
00:08:32.900 | God that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people."
00:08:38.860 | Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living
00:08:45.980 | as slaves of God.
00:08:48.300 | In other words, realize as Christians that you are free.
00:08:56.340 | Free from emperors, free from governors, free from presidents, free from worldly powers
00:09:02.660 | and parties.
00:09:04.700 | We belong to God.
00:09:06.060 | We are slaves of God, not any man.
00:09:10.400 | We are his servants.
00:09:12.060 | He owns us.
00:09:14.300 | We do his bidding.
00:09:16.300 | And when the human state tells us to pay our taxes and keep the speed limit and shovel
00:09:25.620 | the snow off of our sidewalks, we do it.
00:09:30.820 | Not because the state is our authority, but because God is.
00:09:36.520 | We submit for his sake and in his limits.
00:09:41.620 | Number seven, Jesus said in Matthew 28, 19-20, "Go therefore and make disciples of all
00:09:48.260 | nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching
00:09:53.620 | them to observe all that I have commanded you.
00:09:56.300 | And behold, I am with you to the end of the age."
00:10:00.020 | Now that does not mean go and turn pagan cultures into whitewashed tombs with the paint of so-called
00:10:08.020 | Christian externals.
00:10:10.540 | We know that.
00:10:11.960 | We know it doesn't mean that.
00:10:14.500 | Because Jesus defines discipling nations, which is the neuter plural Greek word ethne,
00:10:24.620 | nations, he defines that by baptizing and teaching them and the them is masculine plural.
00:10:35.180 | That's crucial.
00:10:37.280 | You don't disciple political entities.
00:10:40.760 | You don't disciple ethnic corporate realities.
00:10:45.240 | You disciple them, autous, plural Greek, people that you can baptize.
00:10:52.380 | In other words, our job is to so magnify Jesus and his saving work among all the peoples
00:10:59.540 | of the world, that individual human beings are brought from death to life and formed
00:11:06.900 | into the image of Christ.
00:11:09.980 | In every race, ethnicity, nation, this new people, this chosen race, this holy nation
00:11:18.940 | among all the nations are to let our light so shine before others that they may see our
00:11:25.620 | good works and give glory to our Father who is in heaven.
00:11:31.100 | Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable so that when they speak against you as evil
00:11:35.380 | doers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation, 1 Peter 2.11.
00:11:43.460 | Now I have no illusions, Tony, that until Jesus comes, Christians will ever agree on
00:11:54.740 | precisely what it looks like in professional life and political life and cultural life
00:12:01.740 | for the church to be the kingdom of Christ.
00:12:06.420 | A kingdom, Jesus says, that's not of this world.
00:12:10.820 | But my encouragement to pastors is you don't need to figure that out.
00:12:16.500 | You don't need to figure that out for all of your amazingly diverse people invested
00:12:22.060 | in a thousand ways in all kinds of cultural and professional and political endeavors.
00:12:29.180 | You don't need to be the expert to figure all that out.
00:12:33.420 | We're not smart enough.
00:12:36.100 | Take these biblical truths and others that you see as relevant from scripture.
00:12:43.340 | Call your people to radical allegiance to King Jesus.
00:12:48.540 | Set them on a quest of lifelong learning and trust the Spirit of God in their lives.
00:12:55.140 | Yeah, thank you, Pastor John.
00:12:58.100 | So then there's no place in the Christian life for patriotism, right?
00:13:02.220 | Wrong, actually.
00:13:03.380 | We have addressed this and looked at C.S. Lewis's category of store gay love.
00:13:08.260 | Store gay love, a love of the familiar, a love of home, a healthy and a proper love
00:13:13.460 | of the fatherland.
00:13:14.460 | If you want to dwell on that fact on this holiday, see four episodes in the archive
00:13:18.500 | that come to my mind on it.
00:13:20.100 | I think there's at least four.
00:13:21.940 | APJ is 125, 378, 893, and 1494.
00:13:26.340 | Each of those are worth a listen.
00:13:27.700 | Each available right now in our growing archive.
00:13:29.540 | That's episodes 125, 378, 893, and 1494 on store gay love.
00:13:35.500 | Those can be found at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.
00:13:40.620 | I am your host, Tony Reinke.
00:13:41.620 | We'll see you back here on Wednesday.
00:13:43.180 | Pastor John is going to introduce us to God's school of prayer.
00:13:46.900 | We'll see you in a couple days and have a wonderful Fourth of July celebration.
00:13:50.580 | For those of you in the States, we'll see you very soon.
00:13:52.980 | Thanks for listening.
00:13:53.700 | [BLANK_AUDIO]
00:14:01.960 | you