God's Chosen Political Party
Supporting God’s chosen political party is another of several things keeping disciples of Jesus from experiencing life in His kingdom as we seek His leadership for our lives and churches.
I’m continuing to expand on a post written about a week ago entitled
“Spiritual Hearing Aids Needed.” In that post, I listed believing the right doctrines and defending the faith against cultural infidels as adventures in missing the point in today’s spiritually anemic church. Supporting God’s chosen political party is perhaps an even greater and deadlier danger to the church in our day.
Let me be clear. As Christians living in a democracy, we have a God-given responsibility to vote. At least, I believe that to be true. However, at the same time, I know that there is only one name under heaven by which humans can be saved, and that name is Jesus.
Saved. Oh, how we have reduced that deeply biblical term. Ask the average Christian what it means to be saved, and you will hear something about going to heaven when we die. A future event having little or nothing to do with the here and now.
But Paul reminded the believers in Galatia that God, through Jesus, has “delivered us from this present evil age.”1 Likewise, Peter urged his hearers in Jerusalem to “save yourselves from this crooked generation.”2 Skolios is the Greek word Peter used, and is translated, as crooked in English. It gives us our English word, scoliosis. And it is important to note that it is in the present tense. We are, right now, living in a present evil and crooked age. In Corinthians, Paul describes salvation as a past event, a present reality, and a future hope. As Christians, you and I have been saved, are being saved, and will someday experience the salvation that comes to us through Jesus in full.
And just to be clear, we aren’t saved to go to heaven. That is not the blessed hope. That is not the future and final salvation the Bible promises. The Bible teaches that at the end of this present, sinful age, heaven is coming down to earth. We will see Eden restored, and the broken world we know now will be no more.
As my former Australian Associate Pastor in Seoul reminded the American citizens in our church - “You Americans look to your politicians as your saviors.” Some of our U.S. citizens took offense, to which I reminded them that the role of the prophet is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comforted!
In my book, “Prophets or Patriots: How Evangelicals Are Giving to Caesar What Belongs to God,” I don’t criticize evangelical Christians for supporting a particular political party or candidate. I do, however, chastise Evangelicals for whitewashing the flagrant sinful behavior and attitudes of candidates who promise to enact the policies they support. This deal-making with the devil is a Faustian bargain destined to result in disastrous consequences for our nation. America is currently experiencing a deeper divide and greater hatred and animosity among its people than at any time in my lifetime. “Be careful what you ask for; you just might get it” has never been more true than it is for the twenty-first-century church in America.
While we celebrate policies that codify and legalize our beliefs and practices, we experience the backlash that comes with the church’s marriage to godless leaders. We see our support as practical, reasonable, even Christ-like. The world sees it for what it is - we're sleeping with the enemy.3
The very idea that legislation and laws, politics, and court decisions can transform a nation and its people is as unbiblical as it gets. It is fools gold. And we live surrounded by fools leading our churches and our nation. Fools, I might quickly add, on both sides of the political spectrum.
What we need are more fools for Christ.
“Do not deceive yourselves,” warns the apostle Paul, “if any of you think you are wise by the standards of this age, you should become “fools” so that you may become wise.”4
The New Testament clearly teaches that although “we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world.”5
No, I’m not saying we shouldn’t care or be involved in the governing process of our nation. I think I’ve made it clear that I believe this is our God-given responsibility. But let’s not allow our politics to become so intertwined with our Christian faith that the lost world we are trying to reach doesn’t recognize the difference.
Jesus is Lord of all, and he will not share his Lordship with any political party, candidate, or fallen world system destined, in the end, for dust.
“The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah, and he will reign forever and ever.” (Revelation 11:15)
In Christ,
Dan
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You can listen to my weekly messages at Embrace Church, High Point.
Galatians 1:4.
Acts 2:40.
"You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.” (James 4:4)
I Corinthians 3:18.
2 Corinthians 10:3-4.