What does Jesus regard as the “win” for His church?
The short answer is that He put us here to testify to His distinct otherness. He commissioned us primarily to be His witnesses, not His political revolutionaries.
As I’ll demonstrate, that doesn’t exclude working within the political process to promote justice and seek the welfare of our cities — in fact, that is part of our witness — but we’re not here primarily to establish a kingdom on earth. We influence and shape the earthly kingdoms we’re a part of, yes, but our primary Kingdom is (currently) not of this world. We testify to it, and give signs of it, but we’re not trying to establish it here on earth in its fullness. At least not yet. Let me prove it.
In the final seconds before Jesus ascended back to Heaven, His disciples asked him: “Lord, will You at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” He said to them,
It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by His own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth. — Acts 1:6–8
The disciples were asking about the timeline for establishing Jesus’ political kingdom and what they might do to help bring it about. That’s not your concern, Jesus said; when I return is under the Father’s control. For now, My power is coming upon you to testify.
In Matthew’s account of Jesus’ final charge to His disciples, what Christians call “the Great Commission,” Jesus made the same point:
And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in Heaven and on earth has been given to Me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age. — Matthew 28:18–20
Navigators founder Dawson Trotman points out that Jesus used only one verb in that commission: mathēteusate, or “make disciples.”1 In other words, everything else in that sentence that looks like a verb to us (go, baptize, teach) is a participle. “So what?” you say. Well, in Greek, that indicates that the actions conveyed by the participles flow out of, or anchor themselves to, the verb. Everything else we do in the church has as its anchor point “making disciples.” All our other activities should be evaluated by how well they help us make disciples. All our “participles,” so to speak, flow out of that one central verb.
That both transforms our politics and trumps them.
Believing the Gospel Transforms Our Politics
No Bible writer ever said, “Just preach the gospel and don’t worry about what’s happening in society around you.” The prophets and apostles expected the gospel to transform societies. You can see that in how Paul counseled his convert Philemon to deal with his runaway slave, Onesimus. No longer could Philemon treat Onesimus merely as property to be exploited. Onesimus was now a brother in Christ, an equal in God’s eyes (Philemon 1:16). You must treat others, Paul admonished Philemon, as God has treated you (v. 17).
Believing the gospel has profound societal implications.
Abraham Kuyper, the Dutch theologian and politician, is famously reported to have said, “There is not one square inch of the entire cosmos over which Jesus does not declare, ‘Mine!’” Believing the gospel changes how you see everything — yourself, your world, your neighbors and your obligations to them, even your responsibilities toward creation itself.
Esau McCaulley observes that Bible writers in both the Old and New Testaments never envisioned a Christianity kept entirely in the “private spirituality” sphere:
According to Isaiah, true practice of religion ought to result in concrete change, the breaking of yokes. He does not mean the occasional private act of liberation, but “to break the chains of injustice.” What could this mean other than a transformation of the structures of societies that trap people in hopelessness? Jesus has in mind the creation of a different type of world.2
Indeed. Most of the freedoms we enjoy in Western countries today have come from Christians who got involved in politics. For example, N. T. Wright and Michael Bird point out:
Most people in today’s world recognize as noble the ideas that we should love our enemies, that the strong should protect the weak, and that it is better to suffer evil than to do evil. People in the West treat such things as self-evident moral facts. Yet such values were certainly not self-evident to the Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Vikings, Ottomans, Mongols or Aztecs.3
- Where did those ideas come from? From Christians who brought their worldview to bear in politics.
It’s true, Wright and Bird say, that “the Apostle Paul did not march around the Roman Forum with a sign saying, ‘Slave lives matter!’” Yet the words he wrote in Galatians 3:28, that in the Messiah, ‘there is no longer slave or free; there is no “male and female,”’ laid the bedrock for the abolition of slavery and the founding of feminism.”4
Consider this contrast: The first-century Roman emperor Claudius commissioned a statue to commemorate his conquest of Britain, depicting himself, muscular and mighty, raping a young British slave girl. The statue was his boast, his pride. We now find that horribly offensive. Why do we now have laws protecting the vulnerable from sexual exploitation when then they celebrated it?
In other words, why is Harvey Weinstein today deemed a criminal while Claudius, who was guilty of the same things, was feted with a marble statue?5
Because Christians brought their worldview to bear in politics.
The pagan philosopher Celsus lampooned early Christianity as a detestable religion that appealed to only “the foolish, the dishonorable, the stupid, only women, slaves and little children.”6 That a movement embraces such groups would now be considered its greatest honor. Why?
Because Christians brought their worldview to bear in politics.
Os Guinness says in The Magna Carta of Humanity, “The Christian faith made the West, nothing else... Torah, Exodus, covenant [are] behind the notion of ‘Constitution.’ Consent of the government comes from Exodus and separation of powers comes from the Old Testament.”7 British historian Tom Holland points out that the very idea of charity, a social safety net for the vulnerable, was introduced by Christians.8 Pre-Christian culture, he notes, had no such model:
The heroes of the Iliad, favourites of the gods, golden and predatory, had scorned the weak and downtrodden. So too... had the philosophers. The starving deserved no sympathy. Beggars were best rounded up and deported... Only fellow citizens of good character who, through no fault of their own, had fallen on evil days might conceivably merit assistance.9
Thank God Christians brought their worldview to bear in politics.
Countries that adopt a Christian worldview tend to flourish economically, too. Theologian Wayne Grudem and economist Barry Asmus note that the single most reliable predictor for the future flourishing of any society in the developing world has been whether or not they embrace the worldview assumptions of Christianity.10 Places in the world that have not felt the influence of Christianity are the most behind when it comes to the protection of basic human rights. UNICEF reports that only 24 percent of countries have gender parity when it comes to secondary education, and of those 24 percent, all have a Christian heritage.11
I could go on and on. The point is that for two thousand years the greatest moral revolutions in human history have come as Christians proclaimed the teachings of Jesus to the world’s Nebuchadnezzars. As the famous Christmas hymn celebrates it, “And in His name, all oppression shall cease.”12
Societal transformation may not be our central assignment, but it’s the inevitable result of believing the gospel. The gospel changes everything. Indeed, inspiring and catalyzing this kind of transformation is not antithetical to our commission to be His witnesses but part of it. The gospel’s ability to produce the most just and flourishing societies in world history is powerful evidence of its veracity.
Failing to apply our Christian worldview to political questions has been one of the things that has most tarnished our witness. The persistence of institutionalized discrimination and Jim Crow laws in those parts of the South where evangelical churches were the strongest, for example, has undermined gospel testimony for multiple generations in the United States. Popular media outlets still depict strong evangelical convictions and racial discrimination as synonymous. An unfair generalization, no doubt, but the inconsistency of many evangelical Christians on this issue made that smear all too easy.
In the same letter in which Paul famously admonished Christians to pray for their leaders (1 Timothy 2:1–4), he also critiqued a handful of established Roman political practices, including enslavement and institutionalized sexual immorality (1:8–11). From this observation, Esau McCaulley concludes:
Prayer for leaders and criticism of their practices are not mutually exclusive ideas. Both have biblical warrant in the same letter.13
Believing the gospel transforms our politics. That’s a vital part of our witness.
But there’s a necessary counterbalance to this. Gospel witness also trumps our politics. We know that because there are times when Jesus and the apostles pulled back from political matters so they could more effectively preach the gospel.
1. Dawson Trotman, Born to Reproduce (NavPress, 2018).
2. Esau McCaulley, Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope (IVP Academic, 2020), 94.
3. N. T. Wright and Michael F. Bird, Jesus and the Powers (Zondervan, 2024), 28, emphasis mine.
4. Wright and Bird, Jesus and the Powers, 28.
5. Wright and Bird, Jesus and the Powers, 29–30.
6. Wright and Bird, Jesus and the Powers, 26.
7. Os Guinness, The Magna Carta of Humanity: Sinai’s Revolutionary Faith and the Future of Freedom (IVP, 2021); see also Guinness, The Call: Finding and Fulfilling the Central Purpose of Your Life (Nelson, 2003). These lines from the interview here: https://pastorserve.org/compassion-and-courage-in-chaotic-times-os-guinness/.
8. Tom Holland, Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World (Basic, 2019), 139–40. Holland’s book is (probably) the most accessible and influential expression of this argument.
9. Holland, Dominion, 139.
10. Wayne Grudem and Barry Asmus, The Poverty of Nations: A Sustainable Solution (Crossway, 2013), 32.
11. “Girls’ Education: Gender Equality in Education Benefits Every Child,” UNICEF, https://www.unicef.org/education/girls-education/; “Gender Disparities in Education,” June 2022, UNICEF, https://data.unicef.org/topic/gender/gender-disparities-in-education/.
12. Placide Cappeau, “O Holy Night” (1847).
13. McCaulley, Reading While Black, 53 (emphasis mine).
Excerpted with permission from Everyday Revolutionary by J. D. Greear, copyright J. D. Greear.
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Your Turn
Believing the gospel has profound societal implications. We’re called to be Jesus’ witnesses to testify to His goodness, love, and the salvation that can be found only in Him. But, as a believer, it’s vital to bring this worldview to bear in politics! When we walk with Jesus, it shows! ~ Devotionals Daily