The political authority of Jesus Christ: A response to the critics

My last articleI asserted one simple proposition: Jesus Christ do not have The spiritual and the political must be considered separately, for God Himself is the ultimate embodiment of both matter and spirit, the Word made flesh.

This caused a flood of blog-length comments in the comment section, StrawmanVersion Here's the gist of what I mean: Here are some examples of what I mean:

Politics is not incompatible with Christ, but rather it is a political position that seeks to hijack and dominate the teachings of Christ. Discard His person.

Commenter Deus Vult questions why, if Jesus was truly involved in politics, he didn't lecture the crowds on how to rule the Roman Empire.

A truly misguided essay. Simply put, if Jesus was interested in politics, why did he never lecture or question how the Roman Empire was run? Instead, Jesus teaches Jewish believers and Gentiles to treat one another with love (best summarized by Paul in Romans 13: “Do not do harm to your neighbor”).

The solution Jesus offered to the plague of sin was to provide each person with a path to salvation. Clearly, God's population-based (and more political) strategy of Old Testament leaders communicating God's will to the tribes of Israel did not work, because the Israelites routinely ignored God's will.

Jesus forces each person to choose between the path of faith, love, generosity, charity, repentance, and above all, submission to God's will, or the path of sin, death, and eternal damnation. Jesus was no hippie preaching platitudes. He was a serious man telling others that we must take responsibility for who we are and what we do, or suffer the consequences. That he took responsibility for all my sins and sacrificed himself on the cross so that I could have eternal life is what makes him, in my opinion, the ultimate man. And true men (and women) do not wait for a political solution to sin that slaps them in the face every day.

The Lord's way actually eliminates the need for political solutions. Our culture is corrupted by sin, and we try to legislate away what we find offensive, only to find that half the population has accepted what is harmful. For example, the sin of killing babies cannot be solved by political means. We need to turn to Christ, who came to fulfill, not abolish, God's law, and who honors marriage, family, children, and male leadership.

Rollin L. quotes Jesus' famous message: “Give back to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's.”

In answer to the question about paying taxes to the Romans, Jesus pointed out (by asking who was on the coins that were made) that what is Caesar's is Caesar's and what is God's is God's. There's also the point that Jewish priests used Roman coins, but from my understanding they were not used by Jews in general. Hmm.

The points made in this article, taken to their logical conclusion, should answer the question of why Jesus, if he was so politically inclined, did not lead a rebellion against Rome.

Here's the key: In the United States, the supreme law of the land provides that all powers not assigned to the Federal Government are reserved to the States and the People. When it comes to issues like abortion, that is exactly what we have been fighting to restore for nearly 50 years. To those who believe that the Federal Government should have statutory control over issues that are clearly left to the States, I say you are grossly mistaken. I also find it inconceivable that you would point to the teachings and examples of Jesus that suggest that we should ignore the laws of the land when there are mechanisms already in place to address the issues.

All of this makes you a nationalist – someone who despises local autonomy and supports overbearing federal dictates. Murder is also immoral, but we have no federal laws on murder (except in rare, specific cases that fall under federal jurisdiction). There is a reason for this. We intentionally do not allow the national government to take away its powers from local governments and states. Do the hard work of ending abortion by fighting in your state and changing the culture, just as your enemy made abortion so common. Don't be lazy. Do it the right way, respecting the Constitution.

And Douglas Fouts wants to see if we can take the truth of Luke 5:31-32 and build policy around it (we’ve seen in recent memory that doctors can be political, so that shouldn’t be too hard).

So much for the article, there is no practical application, very little, and even if you convey this message to someone, there doesn't seem to be anything they could build off of.

First, I see in his last sentence that he uses the word “revolution.” Define that word. He starts off by saying that Christ brought about a “spiritual revolution.” Define that in detail. Define political revolution. Political revolutions are something I don't want to get involved in in history. The exception might be the American revolution. I need to explain in detail the revolution that Christ brought about. If this happens, it might give some pause to those who try to apply a political revolution to the work of Christ.

Here's an example. He's talking about Christ. Let's start with a basic truth: Luke 5:31-32: “Those who are healthy do not need a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
Now, let’s take that truth and see if we can incorporate it into a “political revolution.” Let’s go back and let Jesus tell us why he came.

Have we ever really thought about why Christ came? Can we put it into words? Can we even define who Christ is? Most Americans say they are Christians, but have no idea who Christ is beyond a few general things. Can they even tell us how to enter into the New Covenant?

All of these commenters fundamentally fail to understand the gist of my argument (admittedly, my wording may not have been clear enough).

The Fundamental Authority of Christ

If you pay attention to the original article, I purposely pointed out that I was not going to quote from the Bible (although I could have), and instead used his peopleThere was a reason for that.

One of the basic purposes of my argument is to remind Christians and non-Christians that Jesus Christ authority In heaven and Extraterrestrial, his teachings and all other biblical references supplementClearly the Bible is important. II Peter 3:16-17 says:

“All Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.”

But none of this would mean anything if Christ was not really the Christ that all of His apostles understood him to be. Paul wrote in his first letter to the Corinthians:

“And if Christ has not been raised, Preaching is useless And your Faith is futileWe are even said to misrepresent God, because we testify that God raised Christ up; for if it is true that the dead are not raised up, then God has not raised Christ up; and if the dead are not raised up, then Christ has not been raised up either. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless And you are still in your sins” (1 Corinthians 15:15-17). [emphasis added]

All of the law, all of Scripture, all of Christ's teachings depend on the nature of His person, His God, which gives His teachings weight and authority.

Politics is not incompatible with Christ, but rather it is a political position that seeks to hijack and dominate the teachings of Christ. Discard His person.

And now, as it happens, we have a real-life example that demonstrates it.

Jesus as a Communist

He is a well-known communist, Marxist-Leninist content creator and political commentator. Infrared Hazard I recently wrote Detailed article on X Specifically, that (you guessed it) Jesus Christ was actually a Communist.

I encourage you to read the whole thing, but here are some excerpts from what he wrote:

He begins by portraying Jesus as exactly what I believe the commenters thought he was: a secular political revolutionary. Now, leaving aside his Marxist rhetoric, his argument begins reasonably well.

Jesus' Disciples did He embarks on a transcontinental journey to convert the masses to Christianity, which results in massive political destabilization of the Roman Empire (hopefully this answers the question of Deus Vult and Rollin L.) But this is where things get dicey.

Citation Mining

He cited the Book of Acts, saying that the apostles actually Lived Essentially, he points out that the apostles of Christ did not believe in private property, and that this communist essence of early Christianity was later erased from the religion and inactivated as “purely spiritual.” As a result, the spiritual became separated from “practical reality.”

This is the ironic part, because here Infrared Has is detaching Christianity from reality through out-of-context quote mining.

At the beginning of Acts 4:8-12, we find Peter delivering an inspired monologue to the Pharisees, who were questioning the apostles' miraculous works.

“Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, 'You leaders of the people, elders,If we were being interrogated today about a good deed done to a lame man, how was this man healed?Let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel. In the name of Jesus Christ of NazarethThis man whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead, stands before you alive through him – the stone which you the builders rejected, but which has become the chief cornerstone. And there is no salvation in any other name, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.” [emphasis added]