Meet Brandon, who self-identifies as an agnostic. He describes his current experience with Christians: “Today whenever I experience the activities of American Christians as an organized group . . . it is almost always in terms of them trying to use political force to entice people to behave in a certain way.”[1] It is striking that when Brandon thinks about Christian activities, what leaps to mind is not prayer, worship, love for God, concern for neighbor, charitable deeds, or affection for creation. It is political coercion.
Political Bullies
Unfortunately, Brandon is far from alone in finding political coercion to be the new face of Christianity. The Barna Group’s studies showed that 48 percent of the US population is concerned about the role of conservative Christians in politics. It is one of the main reasons non-Christians give in explaining why they aren’t interested in becoming Christians.[2]
Brandon’s impressions are doubly striking when we discover that he is a Republican. So he favors many of the policies for which conservative American Christians agitate. Yet even still he finds that Christians today are so heavily invested in power politics that it has become their primary identity marker. If an agnostic like Brandon finds this distasteful, even though he is a political ally to conservative Christianity, imagine how left-leaning non-Christians feel.
This is not about right versus left. The issue is that outsiders sense Christians are more committed to the left or right political camp than to Jesus. When Christians are more known for partisan politics than their acts of mercy, it is no wonder that many non-Christians can’t imagine becoming Christian. It is a major obstacle.
Is Christianity political? “Outsiders sense Christians are more committed to the left or right political camp than to Jesus.”
The True Political Gospel
But make no mistake on this point: the gospel is political to the core. It is also inescapably social. Those who say otherwise—I’m resisting the temptation to name prominent names here—have badly misunderstood the gospel. They’ve misidentified the heart of the gospel as personal reconciliation with God by mental faith rather than seeing the gospel for what it is in Scripture: the announcement that Jesus has become the King over every aspect of the universe.
We don’t receive personal regeneration that awakens faith and then come to accept Jesus’s kingship. That is precisely backward. When Jesus became King he provided saving benefits like regeneration and reconciliation for his people. We enter those benefits personally when we give allegiance (“faith”) to Jesus as King, not before.
The announcement “Jesus is King” is at bedrock a political claim. Moreover, it is not simply an otherworldly vision, as if Jesus only has a rightful claim as King over “souls” or “hearts” rather than over all the world’s political affairs and social realities. When Jesus said, “My kingdom is not from this world” (John 18:36), he was describing the source of his authority, not its scope or range. To the contrary, Scripture is clear that Jesus rules over everything, including earthly political leaders, governments, and citizens.
Is Christianity political? “Scripture is clear that Jesus rules over everything, including earthly political leaders, governments, and citizens.”
Because the gospel is political and has a social vision, Christians do not need to be less political. Christians need to be more political—but in a way that aligns with their King’s power-in-weakness approach. The key is to recognize how and where Jesus’s kingship is functionally operative today.
The How of Jesus’s Rule
Jesus’s reign over everything is presently noncoercive. This means his rule is always in effect but it is not forced upon people. Therefore it is not always acknowledged.
All spheres of life are under Jesus’s direct sovereignty, but his present policy allows his governance to be rejected. One day “every knee will bow” (Phil. 2:10). Now many proud knees are unbent. Jesus is OK with this, and his followers must follow suit. One day “every tongue will confess ‘Jesus is Lord’” (Phil. 2:11). Currently, however, many tongues loudly champion other lords and gods. Jesus permits this for the meanwhile. If Christians are to follow their King’s policies, they must allow nonbelievers to hold faulty allegiances, while testifying persuasively to Jesus’s ultimate kingship.
The Where of Jesus’s Rule
Christians often feel that Jesus’s reign is not a political option in the real world. “I can’t vote for Jesus, he is not on the ballot,” is a common refrain. While this is true, it also misunderstands where Jesus’s real political power is operative today.
Not everyone is in rebellion. There are pockets, here and there, where he really does reign, right now. When the true church gathers, it confesses, “Jesus is the Christ!” in recognition of his authority, desire, and ability to rule his people.
If churchgoers are not confessing “Jesus is King” (explicitly or implicitly) when they worship together, then the church does not exist in that place. The church is created, maintained, and built up. as initially Peter and then others confess that Jesus is the Christ (Matt. 16:16–18; Mark 8:29). Without confession of Jesus’s kingship and an intention to heed his sovereign directives, a gathering is merely a Jesus admiration society with an auxiliary band. It is not the church. The church exists when two or three or more gather in Jesus’s name because those who gather recognize and welcome his presence as the sovereign authority (Matt. 18:18–20; cf. 1 Cor. 5:4–5; 12:1–3). Jesus reigns through the Holy Spirit wherever his rule is welcomed and freely obeyed, because his present policy is a noncoercive rule.
Is Christianity political? “Jesus reigns through the Holy Spirit wherever his rule is welcomed and freely obeyed, because his present policy is a noncoercive rule.”
When we declare “Jesus is the King” with integrity, we are inviting Jesus to rule over us—here and now—and are expressing our keen desire to heed his sovereign decisions. The greatest urgency and struggle on Sunday morning (and in other meetings) is to sincerely make this specific confession with a readiness to listen and obey, so that a gathering can actually become the church.
The church is the church only when it is the King’s citizen body. Our political and social hopes are rooted in the King’s community.
Political How?
Since the gospel is inherently political, it is impossible to be a Christian and be uncommitted to a political position. To be a Christian is to have accepted Jesus’s political reign and his social vision—or, at least, to be in the process of learning how to do so.
Christians should be political first by submitting to Jesus’s kingship as they gather with other Christians. Then they can effectively bear witness to Jesus’s noncoercive, suffering-for-others, glorious reign from within that location.
The how of Jesus’s politics is to allow the Holy Spirit to demonstrate his cross-and-resurrection power in the midst of our frail human weaknesses as we serve others in his name (2 Cor. 4:3–11; 13:4). Christians must be more political than they currently are by fostering an alternative political life and society in the local church that attests to the reality of Jesus’s present rule in that gathered body. Jesus’s reign should spill out to neighborhoods, cities, and the world from there.
Christians also should participate in politics outside the church. But their political footprint outside the church should mostly be oriented toward supporting policies that aid the vulnerable and encourage submission to Jesus’s kingship within the church—while testifying that a better alternative politics extends into the world only from that source. When outsiders see the church, they should see that God’s restorative glory truly is present and overflowing where Jesus is allowed to rule in the midst of his people—that humans, creation, and God are brought to ever higher levels of honor there.
Is Christianity political? “When outsiders see the church, they should see that God’s restorative glory truly is present and overflowing where Jesus is allowed to rule in the midst of his people.”
If Christians are busier pointing right or left than they are gathering with others to confess “Jesus is King” and submit to his rule, then they’ve been inappropriately captured by partisan politics. When Christians fail to practice King Jesus’s power-in-weakness politics, outsiders only see unholy alliances, left-versus-right hatred, and the application of a coercive ethic. When we proclaim, “Jesus is King,” we have the chance to show outsiders that Jesus’s reign can gloriously transform a citizen body.
[1] David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons, UnChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity . . . and Why It Matters (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2007), 166.
[2] David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons, UnChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity . . . and Why It Matters (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2007), 156.
Excerpted from Matthew W. Bates, Why the Gospel? Living the Good News of King Jesus with Purpose (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2023). Reproduced by permission of the publisher.
