Our Political Gospel - Originally published on Oct 2nd 2024

Dear Harvest Family,

Every day brings a new political postcard in the mail. All of us are getting spammed with opinion poll texts. You can’t check your phone without seeing an attack ad. It’s officially election season!

We are now about a month from the United States election, and I want to use this newsletter for the weeks of October to make a few pastoral suggestions about thinking clearly and acting faithfully in our polarized political age. I apologize in advance for somewhat longer emails than usual these next few weeks!

I suppose the best place for us to start is with our gospel, since that should be our foundation for thinking about politics.

Jesus Christ is the living king of all creation. That’s our first core conviction at Harvest, and it’s the essence of the biblical gospel.

To flesh it out a bit, Scripture presents the gospel as a story with a past, present, and future:

Past: By his life and death and resurrection, Jesus as God’s son and messiah has fulfilled God’s promise to restore God’s rule over sin and death and darkness.

Present: He’s now enthroned at God’s right hand and working through his Holy Spirit in the church to model and make known his coming kingdom.

Future: God promises that Jesus will come again as final judge to establish his kingdom on earth in all its fullness.

Response: In light of this good news, Scripture tells us that all people everywhere should seek God’s forgiveness and serve Jesus as king by joining in the work he’s doing right now in the world through the church.

That’s our gospel, the good news we proclaim.

Notice that our gospel is a political message. It involves a ruler, a reign, and a realm.

The gospel is about the real world that we live in, and it concerns more than just the individual experience of forgiveness, as glorious as that experience is. It makes claims about how God is presently working in the world, what we should be doing right now, and where all of this is heading.

For this reason, the Christian faith can never be considered a private matter, and as Christians we cannot look with disinterest upon the politics of our age. We grieve when we look at the gap between the kingdoms of this earth and the kingdom of our God. We mourn that things are such a mess. Our heart breaks over the way that bad policies and corrupt leadership cause so much pain. We act and vote and pursue justice and righteousness and mercy on earth, knowing that God has entrusted to earthly governments the limited but important work of maintaining justice and peace as we wait for our true king to bring his kingdom.

But at the same time, we recognize that the role and God-ordained mission of the church is not the same as the role and God-ordained mission of the state (more to come in next week’s newsletter), and we are under no illusion that the fate of the world hinges upon the next election. We’re not partisan, beholden to any earthly personality or party or movement or nation. Our allegiance ultimately lies elsewhere.

Our fundamental outlook toward earthly politics is the heavenly perspective of Psalm 2. The nations rage. The peoples plot in vain. The kings of earth rebel against God. The world seems out of control. But one day all that commotion is going to stop, and the nations of this world are going to bow down before King Jesus. And we have the opportunity right now to enter his service and join his kingdom work today. That’s good news, and it should make us realistic, humble, hopeful citizens as we engage in the earthly politics of our day from a heavenly perspective.

Application: When you talk about politics, what’s your tone? What three words come to mind for people whenever they hear you talking about political issues? Realistic? Humble? Hopeful? Would those be the words that come to mind? Or would people think of some other words to describe you?

My prayer for Harvest this election season is that we’d be engaged citizens who weigh matters carefully, pursue conversations charitably, and act according to our conscience with a spirit of humility and hopefulness, never losing sight of our primary duty to faithfully bear witness to Christ’s coming kingdom.

In Christ,

Ben Wilson

PS – For this month’s book recommendation, I’ve chosen Political Gospel, by Patrick Schreiner. While no single book can do justice to the breadth and complexity of Christian political theology, Schreiner’s book offers an accessible survey of the biblical foundations for a Christian approach to politics, and it provides a basic framework for thinking about our role as Christian citizens in society. You may not agree with every illustration or conclusion that the author presents, but this book will push you to think, to return to the Scriptures, and to prayerfully pursue a faithful witness as an engaged Christian citizen.