I can hear the snickers the first time a Roman believer said to his next door neighbor: "You know, there is another King, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who was crucified for our sins and rose from the dead to make us righteous in the sight of God. He is now ruling at God’s right hand until all his enemies are made a footstool for his feet." His neighbor waits. No punch line. No drawing back of the gospel sword. No, "Well, I do not mean that Jesus Christ is a real king, just a spiritual one, you know, in our hearts." No, "Hey, it’s a new religion I just found that has really met a need in my life; why don’t you give it a try?" Just earnestness, sincerity, and hopefulness. "You mean," the response slowly comes, "that the Jesus you worship is over every earthly king, even Caesar? Do you honestly think that Jesus Christ will defeat the Romans with a kingdom in the skies? Come on, you’ve seen the Roman army, the might of Rome, the world dominion of our people. Anyway, that kind of talk is treason."
The claim that "Christ, not man, is King," has never ceased to create bewilderment and mockery in those who hear it, not even when their kingdom lies in ruins. Not even when those who serve this King progress in the world against all the malice of Satan and opposition of men. Unbelievers simply will not believe that Jesus Christ is Lord, for the "God of this age" has blinded them (2 Cor. 4:4). He does not want them to see reality. Their own hearts are hardened against the truth. God has hardened their hearts. Nevertheless, Christ is King, and nothing can change this reality or thwart the "zeal of the Lord of hosts" from building his kingdom above all other kingdoms. Those who believe and seek his kingdom are blessed. Those who do not are doomed for antiquarian research on the part of blind men who create academic departments to find the "real" reasons that such magnificent kingdoms and philosophies eventually fell apart. There is only one ultimate reason. Jesus Christ marches through history, making war, dripping with the blood of his enemies, using the weak to overcome the strong, the pathetic to bring down the powerful, the word of the gospel to defeat the word of man.
But something happened to the message of the King, the gospel that brought human kingdoms to their knees, withstood the fires of persecution, and sustained the faith of lowly people against the skepticism of unbelief and the intrigues of the devil. It became blunted, lost along the way. First, it was the introduction of earthly prosperity, which came to be so identified with the kingdom of Jesus Christ that any sense of its inner realities, divine origin, and heavenly goal were gradually overcome by pomp and ritual, the external glory and wealth of the church, and the desire for worldly domination. Centuries later, it was the splitting of man’s life and thinking into history and "higher history," nature and grace, the world of science and the world of faith, sacred and secular. In such a milieu, the claims of the King were gradually yet inevitably restricted to a spiritual realm that for all practical purposes did not really matter anyway. What counts, according to the Enlightenment, is the world of science and factuality, the realm of man’s reason. Proclaim your King, humanism says, as long as he has nothing to do with real history and does not impinge upon our desire to seek truth independently from God’s revelation. On the other side of the split, what counts, according to Pietism and Mysticism, is not this world but the inner man, personal piety, and life within the church. We will proclaim our King, but he has very little to do with this life, for we know that history belongs to the devil and his henchmen. And so for two millennia, except in brief periods of greater consistency, the church has gone back and forth between a King so immersed in this life that the visible church, outward unity, and earthly prosperity are the primary marks of his reign, or a King so removed from this life that his reign is internalized and his claims upon history ignored or spiritualized away, i.e., irrelevant to man’s earthly life.
The church is presently held in the grips of both of these false dilemmas and theologies, depending upon one’s particular school of thought. Perhaps the dominant American commitment, however, for we are ever a people on the move and marked by an insatiable thirst for expansion and novelty, is the this-world King of the Moral Majority and Religious Right crowd. All is well, they say, if we can only get our man elected, our agenda to its place in the public forum of ideas, our social agenda at least publicly countenanced. We have awakened from this theological nightmare, and it is a relief to me that the King toppled this idolatrous dream, for now we may hope to get down to business, the duty of recovering a complete King, the cosmic Christ, the Lord of heaven and earth.
First, however, we need to clear away a little bit of rubble in our collective thinking. For example, the church on these shores has for too long equated the Christian faith with the "American way of life." It is not. Yet, because we have given in to the temptation to think it is, we have increasingly accepted that politics is the really important sphere of life. We have submitted to statism to guarantee security, especially financial security. And if nothing else, we have lived as if prosperity were a birth right, a blessing inherent in the American system, which we must think to have discovered the key to personal affluence. In this delusion, we have, on the one hand, made the kingdom of Jesus Christ too "this worldly," oriented more around the public façade of religiosity and full larders than possessing the reality of it, too dependent upon the fleeting promises of political hucksters who supposedly share our faith commitments, or at least their social results. They do not; we have been deceived. We have wanted to be deceived, for their version of the kingdom makes no demands upon us but an occasional vote and a complaint letter to our officials. This kingdom gives us leave to wave the American flag with gusto, for we think that the Christian flag is on the reverse side. Against this foolishness, we have forgotten that heart-religion comes first; unless the King first subdues the hearts of man to teachableness, any attempt to "bring in his kingdom" is sheer folly and evidence that we also may lack the reality of his reign while contenting ourselves to stand outwardly for a few snippets of ostensibly Christian social goals.
On the other hand, we have also blunted the real historical implications of the King’s gospel, which is not primarily national prosperity, or the right man in office, or the realization of supposedly Christian social agendas through the ballot box. The King says, "Repent, or I will destroy your nation. Has your study of history not enabled you to see the political scalps hanging from my belt, the national notches of one human kingdom after another that I have destroyed by the word of my mouth? And you, my American Christians, are so duped, compromised, and cowardly. Where is your blood in standing for righteousness? Where is your poverty because you have taken joyfully the spoiling of your goods for my names’ sake? Where is your unflinching - not borrowing methods and expectations from the other side because it is convenient or seems to gain a public hearing - stand for my word?" In our attempts to bring heaven to earth, we have truncated heaven and created a wasteland on earth. We have not really understood the historical implications of the King’s word at all. It is not nations based upon a fallen understanding of natural law. It is not universal tolerance so that the Christian faith will be barely tolerated. It is, "That nation and kingdom that will not serve me will be ground to powder" (Isa. 49:23; 60:12). It is, "Jesus Christ is the Prince of the kings of the earth," and, "Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and you perish in the way when his wrath is kindled just a little" (Rev. 1:5; Ps. 2:10). In our efforts to sustain a dangerously diluted view of the reign of Jesus Christ, a reign that more resembles tired-out conservatism than Christian truth, we have blunted the King’s real message. This message has proven to be utterly powerless to hold back the rising tide of lawlessness.
Now we feel that something is terribly wrong. Prosperity is slipping away. Tyranny is poised to make monumental strides. We see secularism’s roaring rage and suspect that its pyres may be kindled for us. I say, "Good." Do not mistake me. I am not personally happy about this turn of events. Like most of you, I would probably have been quite content in my sinfulness to go on spending, living under the delusion that the Religious Right is real Christian political theory, without ever having to face my own lazy assumptions about the very uncomfortable claims of the King, Jesus Christ. At the same time, if these pressures lead me to personal reassessment, to set my affections on things above, to re-embrace my heavenly citizenship, and to recognize that I am a stranger and pilgrim in the earth, I can only rejoice that the King has rescued me from self-delusion and the idol of personal convenience. Perhaps through these pressures I will finally begin serving the King.
He is moving. Whatever his purposes are for the west and our particular nation, we know his purposes with respect to the church: to refine our faith, to draw us toward heaven in our affections and desires, and to wean us from the love of the world. He wants us to represent him - fully, fearlessly, and humbly. We are his ambassadors. The various "problems" we see around us and their apparent insolvability is ultimately not due to having the wrong men in office, or spending too much money, or a host of other failures. These are symptoms of our rebellion. No, we have run into the King. There are boundaries beyond of rebellion beyond which we cannot pass for the simple reason that he reigns over the nations. We can transgress his revealed only for so long. We can operate on common grace only for so long. Borrowed capital from a more Christian past is eventually spent. I must recognize these realities and direct my steps accordingly. The first thing is to make sure I am submitting to the King. My only preservation, the church’s only preservation in his war against the city of man, is to have his mark upon my head (Ezek. 9:1-6). I must live by his word more self-consciously and steadfastly than ever. I must not love this world. I must weep and blush over its rebellion. Like Lot, my soul, if it is righteous, will be vexed. Rivers of waters will run down my eyes. These things must be true of me not because I fear life will change negatively due to different political leadership but because I am grieved that men are not kissing the Son but are living in rebellion against him. When this is the church’s first grief, it will mourn over its sins. It will judge itself. This is its only preservation against God’s judgments in the earth (1 Cor. 11:31-32). This is the way judgment begins at the house of God - when we who have eyes to see and ears to hear, take seriously the reign of the King, prostrate ourselves before him in faith and repentance, bewail our sins, and seek his grace, by which alone we can serve him.
Then, I must set my affections on things above. The irony of heavenly-mindedness is that it is only the mindset that makes us fit to live on earth. It is the only mindset that puts this life in the right perspective. It is the only heartset that frees me from the love of the world that I might be truly and boldly useful in this life. As the Lord strips away many of our external supports, he is showing his love for us, for nothing is ultimately satisfying but him. There is no stability in this life unless he is our exceeding great reward. Unless we are seeking first his eternal kingdom, we shall always be slaves of men, economics, political promises, and hubristic dreams. But, O, once heaven is lodged in our soul, once we know where our true home lies, we can, if he calls us to it or thinks it necessary for our good, be stripped of everything and still quite happy. In fact, we will be happier, for only in the Lord is their fullness of joy. Lasting pleasure is to be found only at his right hand. I am convinced that before the church will ever be emboldened again to give an uncompromising witness for the King, love for heaven and our eternal inheritance must take such hold upon our collective consciousness that we are quite willing to suffer all things as long as the King is honored and his word believed. Then, we shall not care a straw for the opinions and respect of men, for we shall care for the only opinion that matters: that of the Lord of glory. And we shall love the very men whose approval we once slavishly sought. We can only love the loveless if we have mounted to heaven and known the love of the holy God in our own hearts, if we know how loveless we are and how incomparably marvelous is the love of God in Christ.
And finally, and this is the real implication of the King’s reign, I will be brought through his gracious pressure to recognize that he is my only good. You see, the reason we compromise with the world is that our hearts are divided. We are not as bold as we need to be because we have forgotten that the gospel is not polite. It is a command: repent or be damned. Believe or be destroyed. We want the world’s respect and still to feel like we are serving God. We pursue the right packaging rather than the right theology. We seek détente rather than confrontation. Quite frankly, we would prefer to remain prosperous and largely unchallenged ourselves by the reign of the King. He will not have it. Since he loves us, he will bring us back to know him as our good - him, in his glory and grace, fellowship and power, doctrine and sacraments, comfort and meekness, sweetness and gentleness, even, yes, in his more than a little disconcerting Lordship. He is not tame. He tames us. He tames us that we might always tremble a little before him - before his love and majesty, his greatness and goodness, his penetrating, refining glory. There has never been a King like this - so wonderful and close, yet so high and holy. And he, wonder of wonders, is calling us to enjoy his reign. I think this is the lesson of the present hour - to come out of the world, embrace our peculiarity, and make our stand with the King. He is lifting up his head from the brook, looking for his next enemy to conquer. Let it not be us. Let us reign with him through a whole-hearted return to him. He is the cosmic Christ. Before him, every knee will bow.