I’ve been reading a book for the second time since I rediscovered it in the bargain bin: Your God Is Too Small, by J.B. Phillips. What he wrote about Christians and their small love applies to what I’ve been reading in the political news for months.
First, some background. John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
Who did God love so much? The world. But that’s not what I’ve been reading in the news. The verse has been twisted by Christians to say that God only loves the conservatives, not the liberals. The Republican party, not the Democratic party. And vice versa, for Christians are scattered across the spectrum of political ideology.
Why do some believers assert that a person can’t be saved unless they belong to a particular political party? Because their god is too small. They can only love those who think as they do. In the end, they love only those who love them (Matthew 5:44-48); they’ve made an idol of their love and worship themselves.
The true God loved the world so much that He gave His Son to die for its sins. We who love only people like ourselves are being a disservice to the Christian Gospel, a blight on God’s name, blasphemous to His glory. His true servants, though, have gone throughout the earth to share the Gospel message to many peoples, to carry the love to God to many lands. Meanwhile, in our own land we divide and splinter.
I’m reminded of Jesus’ words to the scribes and Pharisees of His day, “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves” (Matthew 23:15). When we become a member of a political party, are we not similarly immediately indoctrinated out of our Christian values to hate the opposition? To belittle them, to circulate false stories about them? To become children of hell and not children of the God of love?
We need to remind ourselves that conservative does not mean Christian. You can read a conservative publication and never read about scripture. I read one such publication, and you know what it recommended to its readers to deal with anxiety? Yoga! Not Jesus. Not taking your burdens to Him. Not renewing your mind with the promises of God. Not worship. (If you want a truly conservative publication that is saturated with a biblical worldview, try WORLD magazine at https://world.wng.org/)
God demonstrated His love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. In His love, God did not wait until we decided to have His own mindset before He died for us. But we seem to think that’s a requirement on our part. The disciples thought they were an exclusive club and discouraged others. Jesus condemned that (Luke 9:49-50).
The devil has had a field day with the church, demonizing our love, turning it into a pitiable, weak sop of mush. If you’re in Denomination A, then chances are, you believe God can’t love Denominations B and C. If you are of Denomination B, ditto; you can’t love A and C. Your god is too small. Yet His grace is greater than all our sin. His love encompasses the world.
“And He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world” (1 John 2:2). Our love is lacking because we’ve lost the message of the Gospel that’s for the whole world. Instead, we’ve become nice church folks, but only nice to our own kind. We don’t love because we don’t know His love. We know only doctrine and iffy good manners. “We love because He first loved us”—meaning, we haven’t seen His love for sinners like ourselves, so we can’t reciprocate with His grace to sinners. We have the ability to love, but it has been turned onto itself and whittled down to splinters.
The body of Christ is one worldwide body, composed of believers in Christ. God has joined us together in unity by placing them in His Son. It is a bond stronger than politics or doctrine, for Christ Himself holds them. “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). We can add to this list, “Republican nor Democrat, conservative nor liberal.” All are one in Christ. We do not make this unity. We take steps to affirm the unity Christ has already created.
Your God is too small. Your love is too small. Your party is too small. Return to the Jesus of the Gospel story.
All of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Are there any consequences for this? Yes; the payment for sin is death, then into the Lake of Fire. Whether conservative, moderate, or liberal, all have sinned. The problem with the government is not that there are too few good men in it. It’s that sin saturates every worker in it. Without faith in Jesus Christ, every party member hangs over the cliff of death, to drop in due time.
God has submitted a remedy. He sent His perfect, sinless, holy Son Jesus Christ to die in the sinner’s place. Whoever admits his sin before God and his need for Jesus as Savior, will be saved from the punishment due their sin, but also receive power to hold down sin and do the will of God—by God coming to dwell in them.
He came to set up a kingdom where His subjects would love Him with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love their neighbors like they love themselves—through the power of the Spirit of Christ dwelling within. We may call it grace, where God adds to our innate abilities the vastness of His own.
When we are oblivious to that power and the bridge of faith that accesses it, we operate only in the realm of the natural. We miss the “extra” that is God’s grace to enable us to live above our resources and love as He loves. We tread the broad way that many travel, which leads to death. Death of our witness. Crippling of our spiritual life. Destruction of our relationship with God and one another.
God is so serious about maintaining the unity of the body He has already accomplished by placing us in Christ, that if we do not reach out a hand to our brother in forgiveness, God will not forgive us. If we will not stand with Christ against division, Christ will reject us before the Father and all the holy angels.
Sin is a spiritual problem requiring a spiritual solution. When we look to political parties, we look to non-spiritual solutions. That can’t end well; it will end disastrously.
