By John Piper

I have a vision of the church as a people who are sojourners, strangers, exiles, refugees in this world (Hebrews 11:13; 1 Peter 2:11; Philippians 3:20). A happy, peaceful, loving people who swear allegiance to a foreign king, Jesus Christ, and to no other. A people who reside in every nation but whose all-determining citizenship is in heaven, from which we await our King and Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. I have a vision of the church as the freest of all peoples in the world. Free from fear and greed because the kingdom to which we belong cannot be shaken (Hebrews 12:28), and because our true fatherland is heaven (Hebrews 11:16), and the city of our destiny has God for its builder and maker (Hebrews 11:10). I see the church as a free people because our minds are not conformed to this age but are transformed by the mercies of God, so that we are not enslaved by fashion or fad or any other form of covetousness. I have a vision of the church with strong desires not shaped by the persuaders of this world but shaped by the messages coming from the fatherland. O for a church with a single and radical allegiance to the king who said, “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36).

Culture, Politics, and Christianity

One of the crucial issues before the church in America today is: Shall we be American with a pinch of religious flavoring? Or: Shall we be Christ’s people with a pinch of American flavoring? I think the issue is crucial because there are many in our churches (many of us) who have not seriously and earnestly asked themselves: Am I more American than I am Christian? Are there not impulses in our society which define us in the world as Americans and which influence us daily, but which are incompatible with the Christ-life and the cross-life? Are we not constantly being shaped by forces in our culture which make it almost impossible for the world to see any difference in our values? If we are ever going to appear to the world as aliens and exiles on the earth, then we are going to have to go back and renew the declaration of allegiance by which we became Christians, namely, Jesus is Lord! And we are going to have to wake up to the fact that this is a cultural and political statement. It is a radical declaration of independence from our culture and of absolute allegiance to a foreign king, Jesus. Therefore, the point of my message today is to call us to submit to Christ alone as king; and whatever other submission to man we render, to do it within the limits of the lordship of Christ and always for the sake of his glory.

Romans 13:1–7 has often been used to justify an unseemly conformity to the status quo in this country and in others. It could be used to keep the church docile to the Nazi regime in Germany, and to impede the efforts of those in our own land who worked for equal rights for black people twenty years ago. I want us to look at this text in order to see what the apostle was really teaching. Read the rest of this entry »