Third Way: Kingdom People

“Football outside Jakarta” photo by Robert Collins

“The Lord has established his throne in the heavens, And his Kingdom rules over all.” (Ps. 103)

Here is an astonishing fact.  It would help us a great deal in this current moment if we grasped its significance.

The early Christian movement survived for nearly 300 years with little state interference and no state favoritism.  If anything, the opposite was the case.  It faced state suspicion, hostility, and, on occasion, persecution.  During that long period of time it demonstrated unusual resourcefulness and resilience, and it developed and maintained an identity that was so unique that Roman officials didn’t quite know how to classify it or make sense of it.  Christians refused to accommodate to Roman culture, or isolate from the culture.  Instead, they immersed themselves in it as witnesses to and citizens of another kingdom.

What we define as the essence of Christianity grew out of that early period: a belief in God as triune and Jesus as divine and human, a way of worship, an understanding of authority, the recognition of a canon, service to “the least of these,” a primary identity as disciples of Jesus.

In short, the movement matured on its own terms.

Christians believed that they were citizens of another kingdom, the kingdom of God, which in their minds both transcended the world of their day but also impinged on it and would someday subsume it.  Thus Christians did not identify themselves primarily as Romans.  They were “Christian,” an identity that made anyone who claimed it an enemy of the state.  At public trials Roman officials would ask only one question, “Are you a Christian?”  The answer—a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’—would determine whether the accused would live or die.

Christians belonged to a new “commonwealth,” an audacious claim because Rome considered itself the only legitimate commonwealth.  The Christian movement was small, its resources limited, its organization relatively flat, its leaders ordinary people.  It had no army, no political power, no dominant institutions.  Yet its members belonged to a “commonwealth” far bigger than Rome’s because they believed they were citizens of another and greater kingdom.  

“Yet, although [Christians] live in Greek and barbarian cities alike, as each man’s lot has been cast, and follow the customs of the country in clothing and food and other matters of daily living, at the same time they give proof of the remarkable and admittedly extraordinary constitution of their own commonwealth.”

Christians were better citizens of Rome because of it.  Refusing to worship the emperor, they pledged to pray for him.  They ministered to the victims of plagues, nursing them back to health or burying them with dignity.  They cared for orphans, widows, sick and poor people.  They visited and fed prisoners.  They never resorted to violence to get their own way, even when facing certain death.  They followed an ethic that far exceeded Roman standards.

Christians understood the difference between the kingdoms of this world and the kingdom of God.  Their effectiveness as witnesses, in both word and deed, emerged from the distinction.  They followed Jesus as Lord, believing him to be the only way to life and the only way of life.

That Jesus was a different kind of Lord affected how they functioned in society.  They would not let the emperor dominate them.  They would not let the culture overrun them.  They would not use Roman means—coercion and corruption—to justify Christian ends.  Their robust commitment to Jesus protected them from idolatry of emperor and empire.

I am an American.  I am glad to be one, too.  The history of America occupies a special place in the history of nations and empires.  There is much good in that history; but it is tinged with occasional failures, too.  Our greatest risk is to become idolatrous and thus to distort the American story, to put nation above Kingdom, to “take America back for God” even as we push God out of the way.

Our true “commonwealth” is not America.  It is the kingdom of God, which transcends both time and space.
Ironically, such a commitment will actually make us better Americans.