The Saving Power of Politics
The saving power of Jesus Christ is the hallmark of Christianity. When Christians are baptized their act of repentance is at the forefront as they turn away from the gods of this world (money, power, fame, etc.) and turn towards the one whose faithfulness and righteousness is more than sufficient when their (our) faith is not.
There has been a lot of talk over the past year about how the 2020 presidential election is the most important election in this history of the United States. It probably is. In my lifetime I have never seen the nation so bitterly divided. There have been moments of unity in my lifetime - the Gulf War, 9/11, the Olympics - and yet int this movement where we could be unified against a central threat, the Coronavirus, we find ourselves in constant conflict with one another.
This conflict has been raging within churches around the nation. I have been on the giving and receiving end of the argument (discussion). Each side hoping the candidate they are supporting can guide us out of the mess we find ourselves in when in reality, the one election will not course correct the bitter divide we find ourselves in at the moment.
If there is anything that can course correct the bitter divide we find ourselves in at the moment it should be the saving grace of Jesus Christ. The grace afforded to all people - regardless of political affiliation, sexual orientation, gender, race, economic status, or whatever markers divided us - should be enough to turn the tide, at least within the church in the United States.
The problem though is that we have forgotten the vows we made or the vows made on our behalves when we were baptized. In baptism, we surrender our own lives and are given new birth through the grace of God.
On behalf of the whole Church, I ask you:
Do you renounce the spiritual forces of wickedness,
reject the evil powers of this world,
and repent of your sin?Do you accept the freedom and power God gives you
to resist evil, injustice, and oppression
in whatever forms they present themselves?Do you accept the freedom and power God gives you
to resist evil, injustice, and oppression
in whatever forms they present themselves?
Earlier this week Eric Trump, son of President Donald Trump, was interviewed on a North Dakota radio station.
Touting his father’s accomplishments while in office, Eric Trump said, “he (President Trump) literally save Christianity.”
Eric Trump speaking on North Dakota radio last week on his dad's accomplishments says of his father, "he literally saved Christianity."
— andrew kaczynski🤔 (@KFILE) October 6, 2020
Wait, what?
The President saves?
The President saves the Church? Christ’s Church?
Does the Church really need saving?
It is easy to see how Eric Trump could make this erroneous theological jump. His father has referred to himself in the past as the “chosen one.”
At a basic level (is anything basic when it comes to theology?), the saving power of the Grace of Christ is perhaps the one thing theologians and Christians around the world can actually agree one:
“Thus in this oneness Jesus Christ is the Mediator, the Reconciler, between God and man. Thus He comes forward to MAN on behalf of GOD calling for and awakening faith, love and hope, and to GOD on behalf of MAN, representing man, making satisfaction and interceding. Thus He attests and guarantees to God's free GRACE and at the same time attests and guarantees to God man's free GRATITUDE. ― Karl Barth, The Humanity of God
“God wants man to be His creature. Furthermore, He wants him to be His PARTNER. There is a causa Dei in the world. God wants light, not darkness. He wants cosmos, not chaos. He wants peace, not disorder. He wants man to administer and to receive justice rather than to inflict and to suffer injustice. He wants man to live according to the Spirit rather than according to the flesh. He wants man bound and pledged to Him rather than to any other authority. He wants man to live and not to die. Because He wills these things God is Lord, Shepherd, and Redeemer of man, who in His holiness and mercy meets His creature; who judges and forgives, rejects and receives, condemns and saves.”
― Karl Barth, The Humanity of God
“Faith is ultimately a firm and certain knowledge of God's benevolence toward us, founded upon the truth of the freely given promise in Christ, both revealed to our minds and sealed upon our hearts by the Holy Spirit”― John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2 Vols
“By salvation I mean not barely according to the vulgar notion deliverance from hell or going to heaven but a present deliverance from sin a restoration of the soul to its primitive health its original purity a recovery of the divine nature the renewal of our souls after the image of God in righteousness and true holiness in justice mercy and truth.”
― John Wesley
Disagreeing with Wesley, Don Payne writes that our work of “saving, “leads to versions of piety that border on individual narcissism...renditions of sanctification as a process or journey of the believer moving towards ever-ascending degrees of holiness, of the Christian life as defined by growth or transformation, cannot be supported by the biblical texts, all of which testify that God's work in Jesus is finished and perfect, that on account of it we are already justified AND sanctified, and that God is the one who sanctifies- God can sanctify even inanimate objects."
Theologian James Cone wrote,
“The gospel of Jesus is not a rational concept to be explained in a theory of salvation, but a story about God’s presence in Jesus’ solidarity with the oppressed, which led to his death on the cross. What is redemptive is the faith that God snatches victory out of defeat, life out of death, and hope out of despair.”
― James H. Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree
Fleming has something to say on the matter as well:
“Whenever we are sure that we are among the righteous, we immediately find ourselves among the arrogant.”
― Fleming Rutledge, And God Spoke to Abraham: Preaching from the Old Testament“The New Testament writings all presuppose that the fallen human race and the equally fallen created order are sick unto death beyond human resourcefulness.”
― Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ
The Apostle Paul gets in on the action:
“For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God— not the result of works, so that no one may boast.” - Paul, the Apostle, Ephesains 2:8-9 (NRSV)
Even Mark Driscoll, whose theology I despise, he and I can at least agree on Christ’s saving grace and our failings. Here’s Driscoll riffing on Paul’s letter to the Galatians:
“God is holy and lives in heaven. We are unholy and live on earth. For this relationship to be restored and the gap to be bridged, someone needs to do something.” - Mark Driscoll
Jesus even had something to say on the matter:
“When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and asked, “Who then can be saved? Jesus looked at them and said, ‘With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.’” - Matthew 19: 25-26
The lordship of Christ, then, is the lens through which Christian faith and discipleship are understood. The reality of our covenant with God is realized in the life of Jesus Christ. [i] It is Jesus Christ who came to manifest salvation not for a specific community at a particular point in history. But rather it is Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who came for the salvation of the entire world. As sinners, we are in need of Christ to reconcile us before God. T.F. Torrance writes, "We can approach Jesus only as a sinner who needs the mediation of Christ.”[ii]
Regardless of how we get theologically get there, Jesus is the savior of the Church, not Donald Trump.
Regardless of how we get theologically get there, Jesus is the savior of the World, not Donald Trump.
We can hope that our elected leaders will bring us back together in the midst of the bitter divide we find ourselves in at the moment but only Jesus Christ has the power, the authority, to save.