Grace should make us gracious and mercy should make us merciful. Both human qualities have political implications and explain the political calling of Christians. The message of the gospel does not stop at personal salvation. If we confess Christ as Saviour we must surrender to Him as Lord, and as Lord He calls us to all that is implied in being gracious and merciful. The late nineteenth century theologian Abraham Kuyper passionately believed in that God’s character should be reflected in Christian political action. It led him eventually to become Prime Minister of Holland. He explained his motivation thus: ‘If Jesus is not Lord of all, He is not Lord at all’. We must learn the same lesson today because many evangelicals doubt that it is right for Christianity to be involved in politics.

JUSTICE, LOVE, GRACE AND MERCY

God loves all people. (Jn.3:16), but He loves them differently. To those who are saved He gives grace-love, but to all He gives mercy-love. Grace love is God’s love as Saviour, while mercy-love is God’s love as Creator. Grace love changes hearts while mercy-love changes circumstances. Grace-love deals with the cause of sin while mercy-love deals with its effects. Both of them, however, have political implications.

THE POLITICS OF GRACE

Grace-love has created the grace-community, the Body of Christ. The grace-community is not simply a spiritual entity but also a material one, the Church of Jesus Christ. The grace-community does not live under the law but under grace, so that Church relations are shaped by grace. They are grace-relations. There are several and inevitable political implications.

Grace-love demands that we acknowledge Christ as Lord. This makes our heavenly citizenship a higher priority than our earthly one. This implies a subordinate loyalty to political authority: we must obey God rather than men. The grace-community also has political consequences. It challenges cultural solidarity not only by simply being different but by simultaneously affirming local culture in the language and style of worship and rejecting it when traditional attitudes or behaviour are inconsistent with the Lordship of Christ. Finally, grace-relations have political implications. They constitute a radical social order by acknowledging all members of the grace-community as equal in worth before God and that they are brothers and sisters in the family God before they are members of a culture or a class within it: ‘there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female’. Yet those very things are often the inspiration for political movements and governments. In summary, the Church is a political body, and most effectively a political body, simply by remaining true to its spiritual nature and calling.

This requires the Church to be vigilant. We may be reluctant to be disloyal to our cultural heritage even when we know that the Lordship of Christ demands it of us. We may theorise about the equality of all believers before God yet re-introduce to church life the divisions abolished in Christ. Of course, distinctions are not divisions. There still are Jews and non-Jews, men and women, poor and rich. Churches may even, for good reason, worship in separate language and culture groups in order to worship more from the heart and address the gospel to their own language or people group. But when the reason for doing so is to exclude or avoid ‘others’ then we are in big trouble. The Church in Jerusalem provides a good corrective example. There were obviously different language groups holding separate meetings, but there was no question of their identity as one church. They celebrated it with one leadership team. That may not be the only way, but some way must always be found for the grace-loved to express their unity in diversity as the grace-community living out grace-relations.

CHRISTIAN POLITICS IN SOCIETY: THE POLITICS OF MERCY

Mercy-love also has political ramifications. 

First of all, it is the basis of God’s moral order in the world. God in His mercy restrains evil and rewards good. This is a moral agenda which God has placed at the heart of government, according to Paul in Romans. Government, therefore, is not simply about protecting interests or generating wealth, but about advancing and protecting the moral quality of a society. So important is this to God’s purposes, that Paul describes political leaders as God’ agents and servants to achieve it.

Secondly, mercy-love has a bias to the poor and marginalised, as Scripture repeatedly declares both in the Jewish and Christian Scriptures. Indeed, God not only has pity for the poor, but condemns the corruption and exploitation that so often creates the problem. Much of the Jewish law concerns preventing such injustice. The political implications of God’s mercy-love are that society must value and promote social justice issues. It must develop policies that prevent the causes of social inequalities, provide for the basic needs of its people, and protect the disempowered from exploitation.

Thirdly, mercy-love changed the world at the cross. When Jesus died, He not only redeemed sinners out of grace-love but dethroned Satan as the prince of this world and took his place – and more than his place as Lord of heaven and earth. There is now, therefore, a different authority over the world. Satan was the destroyer, while Jesus is the Saviour. This spiritual dimension to government is taken very seriously in Scripture. It is Paul’s own teaching in particular, as may be seen from how he closely identified principalities and powers with human authorities. Satan is still active, of course, but Christians are entitled to claim Calvary as their authority to pray out evil and pray in good in political life because Calvary means that when Satan is resisted he must flee.

CONCLUSION

There are two types of Christian politics, then. The politics of grace are the outworking in society of the Church’s spiritual citizenship in heaven. The politics of mercy are the outworking of God’s own principles for blessing the people of every nation. Both are ordained of God and neither can be a substitute for the other. Churches are needed who will live up to their calling in spiritual life and individual Christians are needed who will live up to theirs in public life.

Revd Phil Hill,
Head of Ministerial Formation,
Nazareth Evangelical Theological Seminary.