“Our Political Allegiance Is to Heaven”

Paul’s words in Phil. 3:20 break into our contemporary landscape with a reorienting word. Why do we need such a word?

Political posturing is taking over every conversation today. Even the weather becomes grist for pointed comments about a particular view about global warming. Guns, children, sexuality, health care, the environment, race, justice, education, and the list goes on. We baptize every important idea (and many unimportant ones) into service of the left and of the right.

Tragically, many Christians in the U.S. are falling into the trap of identifying with an array of issues on the right or on the left, resulting in a blurring and distorting of the Christian faith. We can quickly take elements of our faith and press them into service to our political convictions.

Let’s go a little further. Evidence abounds regarding the polarization of our land. So red states and blue states, Republican party and Democratic party, become the standard bearers. What happens, often so subtly that we don’t notice, is that we work our Christian faith into our own particular mix of political views.

The result is that you can find people from either party declaring that you can be Christian only if you align with that party. Then our political views, which we’ve married to our Christian faith, show up at church! That is why we so desperately need to heed Paul’s words.

The apostle declares “our political allegiance is to heaven!” [1] Humans, in the world of the first century and the 21st century, have a persistent propensity to seek our own stability and security. We quickly believe the lie that we hold the future in our hands; so we’d better get this right. Yet every single time humans get to thinking, “We can get this right,” we assert ourselves and our own hubris.

We end up living, as Paul notes, as “enemies of the cross of Christ” (Phil. 3:18). We assume we must save ourselves, so we attach ourselves to all manner of political ideologies to secure our future and stabilize our land. In so doing we commit idolatry by placing our faith in political platforms, presidential candidates, party ideology.

Rather, Paul exhorts that “our political allegiance is to heaven” because it is only from heaven that a Savior will come. Paul rarely declares Jesus as Savior, but he does so here. In so doing, he makes it perfectly clear that all that needs saving will find saving in and through Jesus Christ. Safety, security, and a hope for our future lies with – and only with – the present and coming Savior.

If we long for safety, security, and peace, then perhaps the place where we invest our energies, our longings, our wealth will look more like our communities of faith and our communities where we live. Perhaps we will examine our allegiances and ask how our actions and words on social media align. Are we saluting political claims that are grounded in grabs for power? Or are we humbly demonstrating our allegiance to the one true Savior by our pursuit of justice, mercy and love in our communities?

So to my friends who are leaders in churches throughout our great land, I encourage you by reminding you where our political allegiance lies. Please understand me. I am not saying that one can’t hold political convictions or that a person should not vote come November. Voting is a part of what it means to be a U.S. citizen; please study the issues well and vote!

But in these days of great disruption and upheaval, many of our churches are filled with people who are slipping into patterns of pulling bits and pieces of the Christian faith into the wide and varied political agendas that are rampant in the land.

How will we be identified? Are we Christian Americans, Christian Republicans, Christian Democrats? Or do we dig deep into the wellsprings of the Christian faith and recognize that our primary identity is bound up in our baptism into Jesus Christ? The church and our land desperately need leaders who will rise up and remind us that for those who follow Jesus, “our political allegiance is to heaven!”

Brothers, sisters, friends, let’s join in imitating Paul (Phil. 3:17)!

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[1] Stephen Fowl’s excellent commentary on Philippians is helpful in working through Paul’s thought. See Stephen E. Fowl, Philippians (Eerdmans, 2005): 172-76.