Church Voices

As I do some strategic planning for a sermon series at the first of the year about the people of God (creatively entitled the People of God) I am reminded of a few bits of theology that are extremely helpful in interpreting the scriptures, especially the Old Testament when it comes to the application of the scriptures.

1. In the Old Testament the people of God is the nation of Israel. It is defined by the covenant initiated by God to Abraham and is primarily made up of the blood descendants of Abraham, and takes the traditional form of a nation-state.

2. In the New Testament (and today) the people of God is the church. It is defined by the covenant initiated by God through Christ’s ministry, death, and resurrection and no longer is primarily defined by a bloodline, or confined to the form of, or the citizens of a nation-state (Galatians 6.14-16, Hebrews 4.8-11)

3. When applying commands, or promises found in the Old Testament, or drawing from Old Testament narratives always remember that the application is for the Church, and not a particular nation.

If you’re living in a country that has a strong Judeo-Christian history it can be easy to forget these three principles and apply the Old Testament covenant of God to a nation, due to the nationalistic terms in which it is often couched. However, if you happened to live under a Roman Caesar who brought the full might of Rome against the church, it was probably a little easier.

Also, if I may re-phrase scripture a bit: nations whither and countries fade, but the covenant of our God stands forever. At one time the church was split into two fairly equal parts: the east (Orthodox) and the west (Roman Catholicism), today those two denominations are far from equal. Roman Catholicism clocks in with 968 million adherents and the Orthodox church claims only 217 million.

So what happened to create such a difference? In a word: communism. Eastern Europe, where the Orthodox church traditionally flourished saw the individual countries in that area turn from a traditionally religious government and population to a hardline atheistic government that did its best to destroy the church. The result: a much smaller Orthodox church.

And this is the principle I’m driving at. If all currently existing nations were to disappear beneath the tide of history tomorrow it wouldn’t affect in the least the people of God in the slightest. Our citizenship and loyalty doesn’t belong to any country, it belongs to the Kingdom of God. Lets make sure the application of our theology always reflects that fact.