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Not to mention, nation-changing was never part of his agenda. His agenda was broader than changing or rescuing any one nation. His agenda encompassed all nations. Specifically, people from all nations.
They needed a new command like they needed—well, they didn’t need a new command. What they needed was a plan. They were in Jerusalem during Passover. Jewish nationalism was at an all-time high. This was the annual commemoration and celebration of the nation’s liberation from Egypt.
How we treat, talk about, respond to, and care for one another is the identifying mark of a genuine Jesus follower. Not what we believe. Nobody knows and nobody is better off because of what we believe.
Doing makes the difference. Doing changed the world. Love, as Jesus defined it, for one another is our differentiator, which means our love for one another should be noticeable, notable, and distinct. According to Jesus, anyway. The new-covenant brand of love Jesus calls us to is neither easy nor natural. That’s what makes it noticeable, notable, and distinct.
If we want to make America great, we should follow the example of those first-century Christians in Turkey. We should gather every week and rededicate ourselves to our Savior and to one another. We should take an oath to be model citizens. Model employers and employees. Faithful husbands and wives. In the words of the apostle Paul, we should live lives that win the respect of outsiders. We should love one another the way God through Christ loved us. And if we run out of ideas, we should go look for some feet to wash.
The world will know whose we are and whose kingdom we represent by how we treat, respond to, serve, forgive, and talk about one another.
By one, Jesus is not referring to a paranormal, transcendental state. He’s referring to the joint mission that he and the Father had been cooperating on since his introduction by John the Baptist. Jesus is asking that this joint venture would continue with and through his apostles. That just as he and the Father were in lockstep with each other, so the apostles would be as well.
One for the win. One is the win. We are not winning. We’re not winning, as Jesus defined winning, because we’ve decided that something else is more important than oneness. As a result, to leverage Paul’s words, we are biting, devouring, and destroying one another.21 We’re running the wrong race. We’re striving for the wrong prize. We are more concerned about the loss of religious liberty than our loss of unity. We’re more concerned about who’s in the White House than we are about the division in the church. We’re more concerned about everything there is to be concerned about than we are the
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Unity is mission critical because unity authenticates our message. It makes us credible and convincing. Disunity makes us, well, it makes us like everybody else. Public shaming, theological elitism, heresy hunting, name-calling—those confirm the suspicions of those looking for reasons to size us up and write us off as posers, users, and hypocrites. That behavior undermines our influence, silences our voices, and causes outsiders to wonder why we insist on referring to our message as good news.
The age-old tradition—and bad habit—of importing warfare language and conflict imagery into a faith whose central
figure surrendered his life rather than defending it and who invited his followers to follow suit.
Jesus was not at war with anyone. The church is his body. So it stands to reason that the church is not at war with anyone.
Both Old Testament and end-times warfare imagery and language are incompatible with the new-covenant mandate of Jesus. A mandate given directly to us. A mandate to love, make disciples, and lay down our lives in the process if necessary. The Gospels and Epistles are unmistakably clear. We are not in it to win anything. Jesus already won it. Jesus will win it again. In the meantime, we are to love one another and the people around us in such a way that we are winsome whether we win anything or not. Walk to Emmaus? That’s fine. Jericho march? Not so fine. We are not Israel. You are not Joshua.
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Refusing to import Old Testament imagery that conflicts with our new-covenant mandate isn’t just about theological correctness. It’s about the Great Commission. It’s about evangelism. It’s about the ekklesia of Jesus functioning as seasoned salt and unfiltered light. It’s about ensuring that the life-changing new that Jesus unleashed in the world doesn’t get retrofitted with something old or something reserved for the future. Retro is fine for your middle school daughter’s bedroom. Cinematic depictions of the final apocalypse are great for entertainment. Neither is fine for the church.
The Sinai covenant and many of the Old Testament narratives served as shadows. But now the reality has come.
As mentioned earlier, we are not at war with the culture. Culture-war Christianity is not simply a waste of time, it is diametrically opposed to the teaching of Paul and the example of Jesus. As it relates to the influence of the church, our nation’s challenges do not stem from the church’s inability to convince unbelievers to behave like believers. Our challenges stem from the church’s inability to inspire believers to behave like believers.
To be clear: I’m not suggesting that the covenant God made with Israel at Mount Sinai was flawed. Just the opposite. When understood in its ancient context, it was brilliant! The civil and religious law detailed in God’s arrangement with ancient Israel was superior in every way to the civil and religious law of the surrounding nations. The Torah provided protections for the most vulnerable. This was nothing short of revolutionary in its original context. Women, servants, foreigners, and children all fared better under Hebrew law than did their counterparts in surrounding regions.
But as brilliant and ahead of its time as it was, it was God’s covenant or contract with ancient Israel. Not you. Not me. Not only was the Sinai covenant, as it is sometimes referred to, created for the benefit of a specific group of people, it was created for a specific time frame as well. God’s Sinai covenant with Israel was temporary. Important, strategic, divinely ordained, but temporary. It was a means to an end. In Christ, it came to an end.
Modern historians argue that the Crusades were perhaps justified in light of their geopolitical context. But no one attempts to justify the church’s use of the Bible to sanction the slaughter that occurred. Church leaders weaponized Christianity by offering a get-out-of-hell-free card. Church officials leveraged Old Testament texts to justify violence while promising a New Testament heaven for those who participated. Throughout the disturbing era of the Crusades, Jews were murdered by the thousands and their property confiscated.
Why? Jews were responsible for crucifying Jesus. They were enemies of God. The Old Testament was clear. Enemies of God must be punished. The book of Revelation was clear. God’s enemies will be punished.
Atrocities carried out in the name of Christ in subsequent years would be considered terrorism by modern standards. Cruelty was camouflaged with a cross. Hypocrisy draped itself in fine robes. Torture and murder were justified as rites of purification. Violence was justified because, well, Christians were fighting a war. A war against evil. A war against heresy. A war against the enemies of God. And justification for just about anything that needed justifying could be found in the Bible!
Here’s my point in bringing this up: I wish with all my heart that we would follow the example of the apostle Paul and unhitch our tone, our terminology, our approach to people, and our posture toward culture from the tone, approach, and posture toward others that permeates old-covenant narratives. I wish we, like the leaders of the Jerusalem Council, would muster the courage to distinguish our new-covenant faith from a covenant we were never included in to begin with so that we, the body of Christ, would be free to fully embrace the kingdom values, kingdom ethics, and kingdom message that
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Few Christians push back when encouraged to walk their talk, live out loud, behave like they believe. The pushback begins once we start talking specifics. Christians who stormed the Capitol on January 6 were convinced they were walking their talk. Other Christians were stunned that anyone would associate Jesus with that kind of behavior.
The events involving Dylann Roof and Larry Nassar share several things in common. One is of particular importance for our discussion. Both incidents involve intervention by government agencies. And rightly so. Laws were broken. The defendants would go to prison regardless of what Rachael Denhollander or Anthony Thompson said or didn’t
If we truly care about America and our fellow Americans, we should consistently do two things. We should apply our faith as directed by our Savior, and we should vote our law-of-Christ-informed conscience every chance we get.
I’m convinced many evangelicals would choose someone like Pilate over Jesus. Large and in charge. With armed guards standing at the ready. In it to win it. But in the end, Pilate is reduced to a footnote in the story of the passive day laborer from Galilee who changed the world.
Pause to consider the non-Great-Commission-critical issues we’ve allowed to divide us—everything from climate change to critical race theory to COVID, masks, and vaccines. Two doses, three doses, no doses, who knowses? Why . . . why . . . why would we, the light of the world, the salt of the earth, the hands and feet of Jesus, allow ourselves to be baited into debates and divided over questions about which we all have opinions informed by partial and skewed information.
Unity of purpose is essential to the body of Christ. If you are a member, unity must become important to you as well, or you will contribute to rather than respond to the current emergency.
Everything that disturbs you about the United States emanates from the sinful, selfish, self-centered, appetite-fueled, fear-driven condition of the human heart. Our government can protect us from it. But our government is powerless to do anything about it. No system of government, no political platform, no bill, law, or mandate can change a human heart. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said it well, “The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.”11 So why allow ourselves to be entangled by and divided by secondary concerns when we are stewards of the message that has the
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Imagine what would happen if the church refused to take sides politically, abandoned our culture war mentality, and fearlessly, directly, and politically incorrectly addressed matters of the heart. What if we realigned our teaching, preaching, and discipleship around Jesus and his new-covenant command?
