Church and State–A Sketch in Five Acts (Principle 4)

Read the series.

Some churches in America plan to celebrate the 4^th of July in some way, but may not be aware that such a thing as Trinity Sunday exists (it was on 04 June 2023). Others might maintain an American flag on their platform near the pulpit (unwitting or not, this is a symbolic message to all who enter the building), and face stiff opposition if the flag disappears. These are but two representative examples of how some American Christians of a certain persuasion think of the church v. state issue. This is a vital topic that just won’t go away, nor should it.

In the first article, we noted that two paradigm shifts have occurred in recent decades that changed the realities “on the ground” in some flavors of the American church:

1. The death of Christendom. The external “Judeo-Christian consensus” that characterized public life in America and the West has gone forever and isn’t coming back. The battlespace in the West has changed—it is perhaps defensible to regard the pseudo-“Christendom” that prevailed in the West in recent centuries as an aberration. The situation may now increasingly resemble what Jesus described (Jn 16:1-11).
2. Christianity shifts to the global south. The locus of global Christianity has shifted south in a dramatic fashion in the past 100 years. While the West might still influence the theological conversation because it controls the legacy institutions, it will likely increasingly give way to voices and insight from the larger global church—one that looks and thinks very differently than some flavors of the American church.

We’ve also observed several principles that ought to inform how Christians think about the church and the state

1. The second article explained that there are two kingdoms, Babylon and Jerusalem. Babylon will lose
2. Next, in article no. 3, we saw that God’s kingdom is distinct from every nation state. This means America is not God’s kingdom and has nothing to do with that kingdom. This has profound implications for the church v. state conundrum.
3. The fourth article observed that a Christian’s core identity is as a child of God and a kingdom citizen, and so her principal allegiance must be to God’s kingdom (“Jerusalem”) and not to a nation state.

So, what now?

Principle no. 4: The church’s job is to be a kingdom embassy; a subversive and countercultural society calling outsiders to defect from Babylon and pledge allegiance to Jerusalem.

If God’s people are a scattered, distinct community waiting for its King, Jesus, to return and transition the kingdom to a legal, socio-political nation state … then what is this community now? How ought kingdom citizens think of themselves vis-à-vis the culture?

Two analogies from the Scriptures help us here; (1) the theme of wilderness wanderings in search of the promised land, and (2) being “foreigners and exiles” in an unholy land.¹

God’s people are a community in the wilderness, bound for the promised land.

The person who wrote the letter to the Hebrews, whom I’ll call Fred, is the one who used the “wilderness wandering” theme. The reference is simple. Moses, that great prophet, led God’s people out of the land of slavery and darkness. He took them to meet God, and relayed His covenant about holy living to this new community. This covenant told them how to structure their nation, how to live peaceably and righteously with each other, and how to maintain relationship with God while they waited for the Messiah to come.

Moses was to lead them to the promised land, where they’d worship God in spirit and truth, waiting for the new and better prophet who would show them the way (Deut 18:15f). But, God’s people messed up. They didn’t trust Him. They grew suspicious. They wanted to go back to slavery, thinking it was better than what awaited them. They doubted God’s goodness. God was unhappy; “your ancestors tested and tried me, though for forty years they saw what I did,” (Heb 3:9, quoting Ps 95:9). He barred that generation from the promised land because they did not believe (Heb 3:19).

Fred says God’s community is in a similar situation today; what happened to our brothers and sisters from yesteryear prefigures our own context. In both instances, a prophet has come to rescue us from slavery and is leading us through the wilderness to the promised land.

Slavery in Egypt → Slavery to Satan

Moses rescues us → Jesus rescues us

Moses leads us thru the wilderness → Jesus leads us thru the “wilderness”

Moses brings us to the promised land → Jesus brings us to the “promised land”

Promised land as eternal bliss with God → Promised land as eternal bliss with God

That long ago generation never reached paradise because of their unbelief (Heb 4:2). What will we do? Will we succeed where they failed? Fred hopes we do. God promised them a “sabbath rest” once they reached the promised land, but they threw it all away and never got there.

Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will perish by following their example of disobedience (Hebrews 4:11).

Because we have Jesus as our great high priest, and because He’s ascended into heaven and rules at the Father’s side, “let us hold firmly to the faith we profess,” (Heb 4:14). Fred says we can make it through the “wilderness” that is this world if we stick with Jesus, the great shepherd and prophet who freed us from slavery and will get us safely to paradise.

What’s the connection to the church v. state question?

It’s means we don’t belong here. Christians ought to see themselves as pilgrims in the wilderness, following our shepherd to paradise. God’s people never called the wilderness home. They moved about all the time—they even had a mobile sanctuary! But, they never put down roots and loved where they were. The community married and buried, lived and died, but always knew it wasn’t yet at home. Fred wants us to push forward, keeping our eyes on the prize of the promised land, what John Bunyan called the “Celestial City” in his allegory Pilgrim’s Progress. Later, Fred returned to the theme of looking far beyond this temporary world and to the paradise to come and stated the point beautifully:

If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them (Hebrews 11:15-16).

This means the church doesn’t call people to be Americans, Canadians, Azeris, Bengalis, and certainly not to “take America back for God.” God calls everyone to join His people in the wilderness; to leave Babylon and come with us to Jerusalem—to defect.

God’s people are a community of “foreigners and exiles” who don’t belong here.

The Scriptures also tell us that Christians are “foreigners and exiles” in this world. We live waiting for that better tomorrow, for Jesus’ return, and we may die before seeing it take place—but we know that one day it will.

They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth (Heb 11:13).

If you’re a “stranger” in a strange land, it means you’re temporarily living somewhere you don’t really belong. You’re in exile, which means banishment to a foreign place.² This is what happened to our first parents when they followed the serpent rather than God; He drove them out and barred the gate to paradise (Gen 3:24). We’ve each been born in exile since then, but Jesus is the trailblazer (the NIV offers “pioneer,” Heb 2:9) who’s come to lead us home. If we belong to Him through repentance and faith, then even as we remain in exile, we now own a kingdom passport—the exile will soon be over.

The Apostle Peter told Christians they were “foreigners and exiles” (1 Pet 2:11), and with that status in mind, he told them how to live in a Babylon world. A foreigner is someone who is different, who isn’t from here, who is sojourning in a place that isn’t her home. Peter contrasts the Christians as “foreigners” in this world with the “unbelievers” among whom they live (1 Pet 2:13). He does this because in God’s eyes national identities are irrelevant—His identity categories align with the two kingdoms, Babylon and Jerusalem.

The “exile” theme is so strong in Scripture because it actually happened. The Babylonians conquered the southern kingdom, burned the temple, and took people far away from home to a foreign land. They didn’t belong in Babylon and struggled to maintain their identity in an unholy place. Only some of them succeeded, because not everyone answered God’s call to go back to the promised land. But, the community still managed to retain its identity in a very strange world. The wicked man Haman told the Persian king:

There is a certain people dispersed among the peoples in all the provinces of your kingdom who keep themselves separate. Their customs are different from those of all other people, and they do not obey the king’s laws; it is not in the king’s best interest to tolerate them (Esther 3:8).

God’s people in exile understood the battlespace. Do we?

These two themes suggest God’s community is a subversive counterculture.

When Jesus told His people, “you are the salt of the earth” (Mt 7:13), He meant they were supposed to be different—to be noticed, to be seen, to be salty. We can’t be salty if we’re the creatures of a political party or one more needy interest group begging for influence. The salt + light + deeds triad of which Jesus spoke (Mt 7:13-16) suggests He viewed His community as a distinct counterculture.³ The “wilderness” and “foreigners and exiles” themes teach us that the kingdom community is wandering in the wilderness, following Jesus in this life with an eye on the city that awaits us across the river. We’re strangers, exiles, foreigners, sojourners here in a Babylon world. We don’t belong here. Indeed, the evidence supports that Jesus’ kingdom family is best seen as a subversive counterculture.⁴

• It’s subversive because it has different values, a different purpose, a different king. The church aims to destabilize and undermine Babylon⁵—not America, not China, not Kenya, but Babylon. This subversion isn’t a geo-political takeover in its current iteration (Jesus made that clear to Pilate—Jn 18:36), but a “hearts and minds” campaign.
• It’s countercultural because it rejects the world’s values, ideals, and framework for reality. It proposes freedom from the “mighty city of Babylon” (Rev 18:10) through faith in Jesus Christ—an alternative to Babylon’s conventions.⁶

Each church, then, is a “kingdom embassy”⁷ that represents and advocates in Babylon for God’s kingdom. We’re here to convince people to leave Babylon and defect to Jerusalem. Churches exist to grant this asylum in Jesus’ name and welcome outsiders in so they can be strangers and exiles with us on the way to paradise.⁸

We’ll explore one final principle in the next article.