Save the Country. Share the Gospel

I was listening to my friend Jason Dees preaching this morning. I’ve been meaning to write about this topic and have been dropping the ball. Listening to him preaching reminded me this is something that needs to be said.

You’ll forgive me for not directly engaging on the mass silencing of the right by tech companies. I’ll get to that tomorrow and this is related to it.

I want to begin with a simple statement: We must save the country to share the gospel. The tech overlords are silencing us. They’ll come for Bible believing Christians soon. If you stand tall and denounce the current secular sexual ethic that declares boys can become girls, they’ll shut you down. If you decry abortion, they’ll come for you too. They’ll come for the gun owners by going after banks. They’ll come for the Christian who shares the gospel message that Jesus is the only way to eternal salvation.

Christians have an obligation to stand and defend the United States and the first amendment and do what it takes to push back on the tech giants and progressives who would silence us. We cannot preach the gospel if we do take a stand for the values of the United States. Millions of Christians who voted for Donald Trump are going to be marginalized, censored, silenced, and otherwise driven from the town square. To advance Christ’s mission, we must continue fighting for America as that shining city on the hill.

Now let me add another simple statement: If you were nodding along with the above, you are wrong and following a false gospel.

It is not that we must save the country to share the gospel. That is, as my friend Jason might call it, a Patriot’s Gospel and that is a false gospel.

In fact, I would go a step further and say this: it is wrong to even say that we must share the gospel to save the country.

Doing that is idolatry. We are putting the country before the lost. No country is permanent except the new country Jesus himself will bring.

Christians, you share the gospel to save souls for God. Your mission is not to go forth and preach, teach, and baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to save the United States, but to make disciples of all the people for the Kingdom of God.

The initial Christian Church was composed of ruthlessly persecuted people who did not have livestreams and social media. They had death everywhere they turned and still they turned to share the gospel.

A lot of friends in your church and maybe you have made an idol of the nation. To advance the gospel, some think they have to fight for the nation. They think this is supposed to be a Christian nation. They think the forces of darkness are set upon the nation to turn it away from Jesus.

None of that is biblical. The United States is not God’s chosen. You are if you believe in Christ. You do not need social media to share the gospel and even without it you will still have a far easier time than did the church of old. Seek the welfare of your local community and start there, because that is where you will find your welfare.

Christians in America have a stewardship obligation to participate in the political process. But do not kid yourself that it is or ever was fair. Certainly there are legitimate issues about the tech companies, but also legitimate issues about those who used social media services to plan an armed insurrection against the nation’s government. I will have more to say on that tomorrow.

For now, however, this must be said — if you tie the fate of the nation to the advance of the gospel, you are dabbling in a false gospel. You will not save this nation. That does not mean you should abandon it or fail to be a good steward of it. But it does mean that Christ is King, the gates of hell will not stand against Him, and He will prevail with or without a United States of America.

Do not be so committed to your nation that you are less committed to Christ. Christ must be paramount and any gospel that anchors him to a nation or your Christian witness or faith to a nation is a gospel that is not the real one. Christianity is the only religion not anchored to a geographic location and long after the United States is gone, Christ remains. Above all else remember that all things really do work for the good of those called according to His purpose.