Reed Mueller

Oh boy, politics and the church… in the church! What a combination. Truth be told I was looking forward to studying this topic and after that, to sharing on this topic (posted here). As I mentioned in my sermon, I believe that politics can steal what should never be stolen: a part of our identity, at least a piece of our allegiance, and a whole lot of our hope.

With regard to identity, we can pull from anywhere to define ourselves. This “anywhere” might be our roles within our family, our work, our education, our sports teams, or even our political party. Paul has a list of what he used to identify himself by in Philippians 3:3-6. After coming to Christ though, he seems to have come to the understanding that we must hold tentatively to those things that are not God-given (e.g., our job, our education, our religious zeal, our political registration) while we hold tenaciously to those things that are God-given, especially our relationship with Jesus Christ. He states this stronger than I do, but the principle is at work, nevertheless (see Philippians 3:7-8 where Paul calls his badges of honor skubalon…here’s what it means…and says he defines himself by one thing…his relationship with and pursuit of Christ).

This has implications for how we define ourselves, for our identity. We must define the Christian by their relationship with Christ, rather than their political party. Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case as some (though perhaps not many) have trouble seeing how a person could really be a Christian and yet vote for candidate ‘D’ or candidate ‘R’ (depending upon the church culture one is in). If we do indeed fall into this trap of defining ourselves or someone else by any of these things – even by a political affiliation – we have an intrusion into our true identity, which is one thing only: followers of Christ.

As I studied for this message, the key for me was a deeper understanding of Philippians 3:20, where Paul tells the citizens of Philippi, many of whom were also citizens of Rome, something remarkable. Whereas others may be citizens of this or that colony or empire, you Christians, Paul says, are first citizens of heaven. We need to keep in mind that this probably meant something different to the original readers of Philippians than it does on first blush to us. NT Wright sums up how these early Christians would have read Paul’s words:

At once many modern Christians misunderstand what he means. We naturally suppose he means “and so we’re waiting until we can go and live I heaven where we belong.” But that’s not what he says, and it’s certainly not what he means. If someone in Philippi said, “We are citizens of Rome,” they certainly wouldn’t mean “so we’re looking forward to going to live there.” Being a colony works the other way round. The last thing the emperors wanted was a whole lot of colonists coming back to Rome. The capital was already overcrowded and underemployed. No: the task of the Roman citizen in a place like Philippi was to bring Roman culture and rule to northern Greece, to expand Roman influence there.
[emphasis mine / quote from Paul for Everyone]

This being the case, what are we to understand? We are to understand that first and foremost our allegience is not to the nation of our origin but to the land of our Father. We are citizens of heaven and as such we must seek his will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. We are to expand his influence here! Now, as citizens of heaven – as people who’s first allegiance is to our heavenly country – we must be better citizens of these United States. No, that’s not strong enough: we should be exemplary citizens (see, for example, Romans 13:1-7, 1 Peter 2:13-17, and Titus 3:1). But politics tries to steal us away from this truth and make us first citizens of the United States instead of citizens of heaven. This is backward for the Christian: our first allegiance is to our heavenly home (and this makes us better here in the US)! Don’t fall prey to this political intrusion into your life, sink into the truth of your citizenship!

Finally, the most insidious of political intrusions is an intrusion into the fundamentals of our hope. Politics is great at generating hope in what this candidate or that or this party or that can do for us or for our nation or for our world. But our hope is found only in Christ, as Paul says in Philippians 3:20! Whereas those apart from Christ (Philippians 3:19) hope in the kingdoms of this world and their power, we believe the hope for the world is found nowhere else but in Jesus Christ. And we must never give this up, we must never allow this part of us – our hope – to be taken away!

In the end, the danger of politics in the church is the danger that we will use it to define our identity or anothers and that it will steal our allegiance away from the Kingdom of Heaven and, if it succeeds there, that it will steal away our very hope. So, there are three truths we must never forget:

We are followers of Christ, not any political party or politician.
We are citizens of heaven first, and citizens of other lands second.
We are people who hope only in Christ, not in any other leader this world has to offer!