No Party, One King

One of the greatest harms to the church in my lifetime has been the interpenetration of politics and faith, and I am not sure the American church recovers from it. Not because Christians should be silent in public, they should not, but because a party has quietly become the measure of who is faithful, and the measuring runs both ways. I have watched believers on one side assign the other side to hell, and believers on the other side do the same, and both of them quote Scripture while they do it. This letter is not about which side is right. It is about what Jesus said to people who were sure they were on the right side, and what the church He founded did with Caesar.

The prayer that was accurate and condemned

"Certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others:" (Luke 18:9): that is Luke's introduction, and it names the disease before the parable does. Then: "God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican." (Luke 18:11). Every word of it was accurate. He really was not an adulterer, and the publican really was a thief for Rome. And Jesus sent the publican home justified and not him: "I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted." (Luke 18:14). The comparison was the sin, and it was invisible from the street. That is what a party does to a Christian: it hands him a list of the other side's real sins and lets him pray the Pharisee's prayer with a clear conscience.

So the true distinction, that one side keeps a standard while failing it and the other has rewritten the standard, is not erased here. It is put where Jesus put it. The moment the distinction becomes a ranking, more respect for us than for them, it has become Luke 18:11BH, and it is aimed at the men with the right standard.

Not of this world

Pilate asked Jesus whether He was a king, and the answer is the charter of the church's relationship to every government since: "Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence." (John 18:36). Not "my kingdom is against this world," and not "my kingdom will take this world over by the next election." Not of this world, not from here. The night before, He had said the same of His people: "They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world." (John 17:16). Paul says a Christian's citizenship is elsewhere: "our conversation is in heaven" (Philippians 3:20), and Peter calls us "strangers and pilgrims" (1 Peter 2:11), the same words Hebrews uses of Abraham, who "confessed" it and looked for "a better country, that is, an heavenly" (Hebrews 11:13-16). A stranger can vote, work, serve, and love his neighbors. What he cannot do is mistake the country for the kingdom.

What the early church did with Caesar

The first Christians were not political quietists, and they were not a party. Jesus set the line: "Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s." (Matthew 22:21). Paul told the church in Rome, under Nero, "Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers" (Romans 13:1) and to pray "for kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life" (1 Timothy 2:1-2). Peter compressed the whole ethic into four commands: "Honour all men. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honour the king." (1 Peter 2:17). Honour the king. And the same Peter, when the king's council ordered him to stop preaching: "Then Peter and the other apostles answered and said, We ought to obey God rather than men." (Acts 5:29). Both are true, in that order: honor Caesar, obey God, and when they collide, obey God and take what Caesar does about it.

That is exactly what the pagans could not understand. The charge against the church in Thessalonica was political: "these all do contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, one Jesus" (Acts 17:7). The martyrs died not for refusing to pay taxes or serve in the army but for refusing one sentence, "Caesar is Lord," because they had another King. They prayed for the emperor and would not burn incense to him. That combination, loyal and unowned, is the thing a party can never produce, because a party needs you to be owned.

Christian nationalism, and the sin that looks like righteousness

The sins of the side that rewrites the standard are visible; you can list them, and Christians do. The sins of the side that keeps the standard are the kind that do not show from the street: pride in being right, contempt for the people who are not, a faith that has quietly become a flag. Jesus named that sin too, and He named it for the religious: "Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity" (Matthew 23:28). Christian nationalism has strayed from the path as far as anything it condemns. It has strayed in the direction that looks like righteousness, which is the direction Jesus warned about most, and it has done it while holding the Book.

And the claim that "our side falls, gets back up, and keeps fighting" is not a party's property. There are believers on both sides of the aisle who fall and get up, unbelievers on both who do not, and unbelievers on both who will one day accept the truth, at which "joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth" (Luke 15:7). Heaven does not check the registration. Neither may we. "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free… for ye are all one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:28), and Paul would have added the parties if they had existed.

Where this lands

Keep the standard. Drop the ranking. Vote your conscience, serve your city, honor the king, pray for him, and refuse him the one thing that is not his. But do not let a party become the measure of who is faithful, on either side, because the early church had no party. It had a King, and it died rather than call Caesar lord. Every line drawn where Christ drew none divides the Body He prayed would be one "that the world may believe" (John 17:21). The parable of the two sons was told to the men with the right standard, and the son Jesus condemned was the one who was sure he had said yes (see The Parables of Judgment).

Related: When the Devout Miss God, Every Line Drawn Is Another Division, The Kingdom Is Already Here, Loving the Church You Disagree With, and The Parables of Judgment. Scripture from the King James Version, linked to BibleHub; the words of Christ are marked in purple.