We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.

12 Reasons for Keeping the Kingdom of God Separate from Politics, Part 2
Image by the justified sinner via Flickr
- Satan is the “god of this age” (2 Cor 4:4) and “ruler of the world (Jn 12:30; 14:31) who “controls the entire world” (1 Jn 5;19) and possesses all the power of “all the kingdoms of the world” (Lk 4:6). While governments are ordained by God to preserve law, order, and justice (Rom 13), and while some governments do this better than others, kingdom people must always know that there’s a demonic element also at work in all governments and thus must take great care to keep the kingdom of God distinct from all of them.
- Among Jesus’ followers was a tax collector (ultra “right wing”) and a zealot (ultra “left wing”). Yet Jesus never once comments on either of their views, thereby revealing that such political differences are irrelevant to the alternative kingdom Jesus came to establish. When Christians today associate one political party or nationalistic agenda more closely with the kingdom of God than others, we compromise the separateness (the “holiness”) of the kingdom of God and then inevitably divide the body of Christ.
- Christians are called to be soldiers for the kingdom of God and thus not to be “entangled in everyday affairs” (e.g. the politics of the region where we’re stationed as soldiers). We are rather to seek “to please our enlisting officer” (2 Tim 2:4), Jesus Christ, who calls us to do nothing more or less than imitate him in his loving service to people as a witness to the alternative kingdom he was establishing in the world. Our witness is our willingness to serve and suffer for people whose lifestyle we may object to and even people who may despise us.
- Without exception, whenever the Church as succeeded in gaining what so many Christians try to acquire—political influence—it has resulted in a government that is bloodier than most secular governments. If Scripture is not sufficient to teach us to keep the kingdom of God completely separate from the politics of the world, history should be!
- Whenever the Church succeeded in gaining political influence, it has eventually all but destroyed the Church. All the areas once “ruled” by Christians are now more pagan and hostile to the Gospel than unreached areas (Europe for example). This is not an accident, for the Church is called to be a servant, not a master, of the world.
- The association of Christianity with political and nationalistic agendas has caused untold harm for missions around the world. Many today understandably resist the Gospel because they associate it with atrocities committed by countries identified as Christian in the past (e.g. Europe) or the present (America). For the sake of the Gospel, kingdom people need to proclaim that neither America nor any other country is or ever was “Christian.” The kingdom Jesus came to establish, and the kingdom we’re called to represent, is “not of this world” (Jn 18:36).
Category: General
Tags: Kingdom, Kingdom Living, Politics
Topics: Ethical, Cultural and Political Issues
Related Reading

Voluntary Suffering and the Kingdom
In a post from two days ago, I wrote about the call to voluntary suffering for others as it is laid out in the New Testament. For the first three centuries of the church, Christians understood this call as they sought to follow Jesus’ example of forgoing the use of violence and expressing God’s self-sacrificial…

Capitalism and Greed
It’s hard to deny that capitalism is the best economic system around. It creates wealth far better than feudalism, communism, socialism or any other system one could name. But for all its advantages, capitalism has one major drawback that Kingdom people need to be concerned about: it needs people to stay perpetually hungry for more.…

Vacationing in a War Zone
Suppose a family decided to go on vacation to a nice cabin on a beautiful shore in a distant country. This vacationing family naturally wanted to tune out the problems of the world, indulge themselves, relax and enjoy life and each other as much as possible. This is simply what families do on vacation. Now…

Wrecked for God
Idelette McVicker posted a blog on She Loves about getting wrecked for an ordinary, comfortable life. It’s a thoughtful piece on opening yourself to the world around you so that your heart breaks and your life is forever changed. From her blog post: Being wrecked for me, is facing my own brokenness and yet seeing God’s…

The Problem with “Church”
Many people think of church as a religious building people attend once a week to sing, hear a sermon, take an offering and perhaps participate in the Lord’s Supper (or “take Communion”). Many refer to the church as “the house of the Lord,” imagining that God is more present in this sacred building and during church…