This year’s Mission of God conference on 15 November will see us explore the Bible and Politics. In this article, speaker Rev. Dr Joe Boot (Ezra Centre for Christian Thought) shows that the apostle’s gospel turned the political world upside down
That the early church believed and knew that Christ had ascended to God’s throne room in heaven is plain from a cursory reading of the book of Acts:
While they beheld, he was taken up; and a cloud received him out of their sight (Acts 1:9)
But there is something to be added to this, often neglected by modern Christians, and that is the session of King Jesus to the right hand of God – the place of all power and authority. It is not simply that Christ was taken up and through into heaven; the full significance of this event involves the place of authority which he now occupies. This is where Stephen saw him at his martyrdom:
Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God (Acts 7:56)
And thus, the Lord stood from his throne to acknowledge Stephen, the first martyr.
The right hand is the seat of total rule and authority, of sovereign Kingship from which Christ now judges the nations and rules them with a rod of iron – the great King to whom all homage belongs from the rulers of the earth as Psalm 2 makes plain: “sit at my right hand.”
This is why the preaching of Christ as King was central to the message of the apostles and should be central for us today – we have an exalted King, and this has real-world implications now.
In Acts 17: 5-7, we have a prime example of its meaning. When the apostles saw the gospel prosper in Thessalonica…
…the Jews became jealous, and they brought together some scoundrels from the marketplace, formed a mob, and started a riot in the city. Attacking Jason’s house, they searched for them to bring them out to the public assembly. When they did not find them, they dragged Jason and some of the brothers before the city officials, shouting, “These men who have turned the world upside down have come here too, and Jason has received them as guests! They are all acting contrary to Caesar’s decrees, saying that there is another king—Jesus!”
Their example and message was, we are told, “turning the world upside down” as they spoke and lived in terms of Christ’s kingship – and thus the charge against them was true. They were acting against the decrees of Caesar.
This all shows something remarkable was happening and changing in the ancient world as the kingdom of Christ was breaking in. The gospel of the King’s kingdom was shifting the source of salvation from the politics of the state to grace through Christ, revolutionising culture. This is because the true mediator of salvation and only link between the human and divine had been manifest in Christ.
This is why Paul says in 1 Tim. 1-5:
I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men; For kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour; Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus;
Paul urges intercession to the King of kings on behalf of rulers and authorities – reminding us of our position as his kingly priesthood – so that they leave us alone to lead the Christian life in peace and freedom. This is only possible when political leaders recognise that there is only one mediator of total sovereignty between the human and the divine.
This freedom under Christ did not mean a despising of human authority, but a recognition of its qualified and delimited place as Christ’s deaconate. As Peter urged the church:
Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God. Honour everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honour the emperor. (1 Peter 2:16-17)
We first fear God, and then we can give honour appropriately. We must recognise the true mediator, and then we can hold all legitimate human authority in its right place, for it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. The freedom they spoke of was first personal (freedom from sin and death), then social (freedom of the church/brotherhood), with inevitable political ramifications.
The ancient pagan state was inescapably religious, priestly and saving. Substituting God, the emperor, Pharaoh, or King (the head of state) was seen as the locus of the divine in history – whether Egypt, Babylon, Persia, Greece or Rome, the leaders were consistently regarded as divinised men – living gods to be worshipped. Baal (Lord) and Molech (King) worship seen in the Older Testament are also illustrative of this fact. Nebuchadnezzar set up the image of himself for worship. In the philosophical chain of being, men could become gods.
This came to vivid expression in the first century when Augustus Caesar’s government declared him to be the saviour of the world, the name by which all men must be saved. He was literally Pontifex Maximus (High Priest), and the coinage declared him to be ‘worshipful Son of God.’ The apostle’s radical dissent is again seen in the book of Acts as Peter declares the saving work of Christ:
Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved (Acts 4:12)
This declaration of Christ as the true priest-king, exalted to the place of total sovereign authority, was seen as a political (not ‘religious’) offence, and the church was persecuted for it. They refused to put incense on the altar to Caesar and say “Caesar is Lord” to get their state license to worship. They stood on the exalted Kingship of Christ and thus for true freedom. Their stand on the biblical reality that there was only one mediator between God and man, the divine and human, birthed the first truly free institution the Western pagan world had known – the church of Jesus Christ. And it led to freedom and liberty – personal, social and political – wherever it went.
We must again make a stand and turn the world upside down by declaring and showing by example that there is another King, the one mediator, the Lord Jesus. And it will mean acting contrary to some of the decrees of the modern state. Are you willing and ready?
