The Gospel King Precedes the Political Kingdom

When we shut ourselves off from the gospel, or gradually let it slip away, we are guaranteeing a perverse politics.

P. Andrew Sandlin

Dec 20, 2024

He has sent us a mighty Savior
from the royal line of his servant David …

You will tell his people how to find salvation
through forgiveness of their sins.

(Luke 1:69, 77)

Dear friends and supporters:

Zechariah the priest at the birth of his son John the Baptist understood the Messiah would be both Israel’s King and her Savior, but many of the Jews of the time did not understand the relation between the two. They were not wrong to expect a Messianic King that would liberate them from the occupation of their military enemies. After all, the OT again and again prophesied just such a Messiah (Ps. 2:1–12; Is. 9:6–7; Jer. 23:5–6; Dan. 7:13–14).

Preachers today often piously interpret these and similar texts to refer in the new covenant era to personal victory over sin: “Our Messiah came to give us victory over (for example) the Philistines of our life: addiction, lust, an unguarded tongue, etc.” No godly, self-respecting Jew would have dreamed of such a truncated interpretation. Promises of God’s people’s victory at the hand of Messiah were holistic, not dualistic; they necessarily included both personal as well as political victory. If Israel confessed her (personal) sin for which she was enduring his judgment, he would grant her (political) victory (Dt. 30:1–7).

Christ was born during the expansion of the Roman Empire. The Jews were colonized by Rome, and Israel was a relatively insignificant outpost in the vast empire. Many Jews, having read the OT promises of the political victories Messiah would bring, became political revolutionaries. This is why many wished to make Jesus their King — and why he resisted their appeals (Jn. 6:15). The name Zealots in the gospels refers to this persuasion of political revolutionaries. In fact, the prisoner Barabbas, released by Pilate to the howling mob instead of Jesus Christ, was just such an insurrectionist (Jn. 18:40). By the late 60’s of the first century the Jewish revolutionary fervor had reached a fevered pitch, and the Roman general Titus leveled Jerusalem (literally) to quell the insurrection.

The Political Eclipse of the Gospel King

Today an interesting parallel confronts us. For a century in the West the church purchased heavy stock in political pietism: the Christian obligation to God is limited to private piety and personal evangelism and world missions and church-building and, at most, Christian education. Applying the Faith in politics (and other areas of culture like science and media and technology and architecture and entertainment) is a distraction from our exclusive calling of personal and ecclesial piety. Cultural piety is a rabbit trail that pulls us from white-hot devotion to Jesus Christ.

The gospel is the inexhaustible reservoir of legitimate politics.

This pietism created a social vacuum filled by cultural apostasy, including a political apostasy marked by a secular politics: legalized abortion-on-demand, the expulsion of prayer from public schools, the pervasiveness of porn, routinized homosexuality, leveling of taxes to engineer a Leftist social vision, and so on. In the 70’s a reaction set in, led by groups like Moral Majority and Christian Voice. Many Christians awakened from their pietistic slumbers and aggressively applied God’s word to pressing cultural and political issues. This reversal led to political victories, and even contributed to the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. By and large, these socially re-energized Christians recognized that there can be no permanent political change apart from spiritual change in the hearts of citizens. Therefore, they preached and called for revival and repentance and aggressive gospel preaching. This is the correct, biblical formula for cultural revival.

By 2016, the scene had changed yet again. The Christian political engagement hadn’t significantly tempered the cultural apostasy. The Obergefell decision legalized same-sex “marriage”; cultural Marxism marginalized manliness and lionized feminism; and porn was ubiquitous due to the digital revolution. In desperation, many Christians sidestepped the priority of the gospel in cultural revival and fixated on raw politics. You can install a politician or enact a policy in a single election, but the gospel takes time. Time isn’t what these Christians wanted. They hustled the gospel out the back door, and moved power politics into the mansion.

We’re hearing less and less these days about national revival and repentance to prepare the way for a renewed Christian — that is to say, small-government — politics and more and more about capturing the state without any reference to the gospel, in order to impose a top-down conservative political order. Politics has become secularized within Christianity. We now have a Leftist secularized politics and a “Christian” secularized politics.

Political Liberation by Gospel Redemption

This is the precise reversal of the biblical sequence. Paul writes:

Pray … for kings and all who are in authority so that we can live peaceful and quiet lives marked by godliness and dignity. (1 Tim. 2:2)

The Christian stake in politics is mainly to get the state out of the way so that the family and church can do their job. And a big part of their job is preaching and living the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Christian political engagement generated by the gospel doesn’t employ politics as the (or a) gospel — the job of politics in the Christian worldview is to enforce the law of God appropriate to the civil sphere, a very small sphere indeed. Politics should never be redemptive (as it is in Marxism) but rather retributive: to protect the judicially innocent by punishing the judicially guilty (Rom. 13:1–7). It is to protect the life, liberty and property of citizens. This entails over time a virtuous citizenry, that is, a citizenry a significant portion of whom has been changed or at least influenced by the gospel. A Christian culture doesn’t require a majority of Christians, but it does require a significant minority that can influence the majority. And there cannot be a significant minority apart from the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Conclusion

Shedding the gospel from political concerns is no less truncated than avoiding politics in favor of gospel preaching. When the church, by contrast, preaches the gospel in its fulness, baptizing new disciples and teaching them to observe biblical truth (Mt. 28:18–20), she lays the groundwork for a legitimate politics, because at the root of biblical truth is the claim of the risen King in all areas of life and thought, including politics. In Western democracies, Christians support policies in line with biblical law and elect candidates that will enforce it. Over time this plan will gradually purge society of much of its depravity. When the church fails, it will get on its knees and repent and return to gospel truth. In other words, the gospel is the inexhaustible reservoir of legitimate politics. When we shut ourselves off from the gospel, or gradually let it slip away, we are guaranteeing a perverse politics. We reverse secularized politics by replacing it with the full-orbed gospel. ✞

Personal

The Sandlin family Christmas this year will be much less structured than in past years due to our unusually hectic December. Our CCL symposium was late this year, and just afterwards Sharon had to take an emergency flight up to Vancouver, British Columbia to help our oldest son, Richard. Many of you know he is an ordained conservative Anglican priest and a philosophy professor. Richard was admitted last week to the hospital and diagnosed with Miller Fisher Syndrome, an autoimmune disease for which a full recovery is usually expected within six months, though it is not an easy recovery. Its symptoms are treatable but troubling. His eyesight was poor. He wore a patch, and he must use a cane because of the nerve damage in his legs. But he is improving daily. I ask each of you to pray that he can swiftly recover from this very strange disease.