Put On the New Self
This is the fourth chapter of a book in progress, with the working title “Be Not Afraid of Their Terror.” The first chapter is here:
Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ!—assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
—Ephesians 4:17-24
There is no political solution
To our troubled evolution
Have no faith in constitution
There is no bloody revolution—The Police, Spirits in the Material World
We live at an intersection of time and place where three centuries of humanist philosophy attesting to man’s natural goodness, and its ultimate ends of relative morality, have finally become the majority position. The effects of this ideology have well infiltrated the church. To believe that, in the public square, the designation of evangelical is still a declaration of absolute, immovable ethics is delusion. Nearly half of all self-described “evangelicals” believe that even “God learns and adapts to different circumstances.”1 In day-to-day American public life, the word has come to mean little more than general adherence to cultural Christianity and a belief in certain political propositions that are, more or less, reactive to whatever television or social media considers the outrage du jour. To make matters worse, there are professing Christians on both political ends who attempt to leverage the faith as a means to co-opt you into leaning hard into the promotion or eradication of these propositions; both justify their behavior as a necessary reaction to “the other side.” If you’re not an “abolitionist” who will only accept legislation that charges a woman who has procured an abortion with first-degree murder, then you’re a weak Christian who allows secularists to commit a holocaust. If you’re unwilling to condone laissez-faire sexual practices among the members of your church, then you’re a deplorable bigot who uses a “literal interpretation” of Scripture as a cudgel to oppress people. Neither of these are true.
Christian ethics are absolute and pre-political, meaning that they exist separate from the politics of our society and that we should refer to them, and defer to them, before we consider any political solution.2 The idea that man can determine his own ethics, apart from a Creator, is relatively novel and was only first popularized in the late 18th century by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant. From that, the subsequent notion that all ethics are relative to the forces of politics was most famously proposed in the 19th century by Karl Marx, who inspired much of the last century and a half of humanist social philosophy. In the 20th century, no one was more influential towards our current obsession with the political than the French philosopher Michel Foucault, whose theory of power dynamics, which explicitly replaces the notion of absolute truth with relativized perspectives, has so permeated academic thought that one can now find him favorably referenced by professors at Christian universities. Yet, if one considers Scripture to be inerrant, he must forcefully reject all of these notions. Our ethics don’t come from within, but from the revelation of an immutable God.
They will perish, but you will remain; they will all wear out like a garment. You will change them like a robe, and they will pass away, but you are the same, and your years have no end.
—Psalm 102:26-27
Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart, since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God; for “All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever.” And this word is the good news that was preached to you.
—1 Peter 1:22-25
Our ethics are not reactive; they don’t change based on what others are doing—not when others belittle us, nor even should they genuinely persecute us. If we’re practicing our faith correctly, our ethics are as unchangeable as God Himself (we will fail at this, but the principle serves as a moral compass). The Christian should never resort to the excuse of, “If we don’t do it to them, they’ll do it to us.” We are required to not return evil for evil (Romans 12:17). That, in and of itself, is one of our immutable ethical principles, but how often do we hear that principle expressed by politically obsessed Christians?
Most American Christian public engagement today is two-party politics with “Jesus” slapped on, usually accompanied with an insistence that professing believers who advocate for the other side aren’t authentically Christian, because they support “that party” or “that person.” It is political idolatry and taking the Lord’s name in vain to claim to be a disciple of Jesus Christ, and yet also say, “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… unless you vote Democrat. Nobody who is Christian could vote for a party whose platform is pure evil.”3 While Christians and their churches have the right to defend the pre-political (i.e., a Christian cannot suggest abortion as an option for a pregnant woman and remain in good standing in a Bible-believing church), we do not have the right to define how other Christians must transfer that immutable value into the realm of politics. If Christians who bind others’ consciences this way truly operated from this supposed principle, and didn’t selectively apply it for their own worldly political purposes, then the only option left for them would be to exit from political engagement altogether to avoid the promotion of any sinful individuals and laws. Pastors and theologians who get on social media every election season and insist that Christians follow their formulation for choosing this year’s relative lesser of two evils—a formulation that never changes parties or takes a principled, third-party stance, because we can’t let “the other side” win—are acting more as political operatives than shepherds and teachers.
The man who places Christ first, who has decided that all worldly action must take a back seat to his pre-political commitments, will not fall for, nor engage in, these conscience binding games. If you claim to place Christ first, what do you find of greater importance, that you advocate for your conception of Christian morality to be legislated so that nonbelievers would be hemmed in, or that your life be an example for others of the gratitude you have for having been forgiven for your own violation of God’s Law, every single day of your life? These are not mutually exclusive and you can advocate for both, but honestly examine yourself and determine which of the two you give primacy.
Do you share your politics more than you share the gospel? Do you spend more time publicly complaining about how others don’t follow God’s Law than you do telling others of His grace and forgiveness towards you for your continued failures? Do you focus on the “bad Christians” in the other political camp more than challenging your own camp to better communicate the grace, mercy and forgiveness of God, brought about in those who place their faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross? These are not questions to quickly gloss over; if you claim to be a follower of Christ then there is absolutely nothing more important in your life than the truth of the gospel. How much effort do you put towards demonstrating that?
This is far from a lecture, as I also struggle with this greatly. Because of my public writings against rising political extremism within my own theological camp of conservative Reformed Christianity, if anyone outside of my church family knows of me it’s certainly as a “political Christian.” Though I feel spiritually convicted to write about that subject, due to my knowledge of the origins and beliefs of these destructive ideologies currently being Christianized, it deeply upsets me that my name is publicly associated with that more than my Sunday school class, where we’re going verse-by-verse through the Gospel of Mark, or my work with our church’s evangelism and discipleship initiatives. Most people who know me from church would probably describe me as a guy with a mind far more obsessed with the gospel, theology and discipleship than with politics—but who, if given the opportunity, may talk your ear off about an esoteric historical subject, like the 1844 Philadelphia Bible Riots or the 1838 Mormon War in Missouri (I’m a real hit at parties). Perhaps this book can serve as an intermediary point in a transition from the public political sphere to matters of the spiritual kingdom, which are ultimately of much greater importance.
It can be difficult for us to step outside of our day-to-day lives, and the propaganda of fear continually fed to us through our screens, and remind ourselves that our primary citizenship is not of this world (John 18:36). All too often, our preoccupation with transitory issues negates our ability to properly communicate our eternal hope found in the gospel. Yet, our new self is “created after the likeness of God,” among Whom all the nations “are accounted by him as less than nothing and emptiness” (Isaiah 40:17). What does it look like to eschew the old self, which behaves as our politically obsessed secular culture does, and to put on the new self? Jesus instructs us:
“Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.”
—Matthew 6:31-34
Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’”
—Matthew 25:34-36
How can you demonstrate the hope you have in Jesus Christ if you spend more time complaining about worldly politics than clothing the naked, feeding the hungry and, most importantly, inviting in the stranger? How much would the kingdom advance if, instead of trying to legislate the advance or incorporate another think-tank, evangelical Christians worked to ensure that every member of their church participated in at least one regular missional program? It’s not wrong to donate to third-party evangelistic missionary organizations in other countries, but what if, instead of primarily doing that, we made it a point in our churches to be directly engaged in missional activities within our own communities? What if the annual beautification project of the local Christian school became the bi-weekly beautification project of anywhere that would have you? What if the semi-weekly delivery of food to the elderly, home-bound members of your church was supplied by a free meal served in front of your church, to anyone in need? What would the public perception of Christianity become over time if, everywhere in the West, politically obsessed non-Christians, who are predisposed to considering us a malignant force, couldn’t take a weekend drive through town without seeing Christians engaged in alleviating the physical suffering of others?
You may not be in a position to direct those efforts in your church (though it may shock you what being a squeaky wheel can accomplish, even in large organizations), but there’s nothing stopping you from joining others who are already engaged in turning off their television, getting off the couch, and proactively seeking the welfare of the city (Jeremiah 29:7).
“The State of Theology,” The State of Theology, https://thestateoftheology.com.
Carl R. Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2020), 191.
I once had a public-facing employee of a household-name national media ministry express to me his belief that no real Christian could vote for any Democratic Party candidate, at any level. On another occasion, a fairly well-followed conservative Christian writer called me an antichrist on social media, because I stated that people should not face church discipline for doing nothing more than voting for a Democratic Party candidate.