The Christian lives in two kingdoms. One is the kingdom that Jesus establishes by Word and sacrament. The other is the kingdom of this world, over which he rules with absolute power for the sake of his church. The two kingdoms are very different. In this first lesson of our new study on politics, we’ll focus on the Holy Christian Church. We’ll be contrasting this with the kingdoms of this world. These differences matter because being a part of both kingdoms will sometimes bring us into conflict.
Can you think of any conflicts off the top of your head? There are a number of examples in Scripture. One clear case is when the government of Egypt commanded that all baby boys be thrown into the Nile River. This is, of course, murder. I think we’ll be touching on the hot-topic of abortion in the weeks to follow. This was a conflict, but I don’t know that it was really a difficult decision for God’s people. They did EVERYTHING in their power to break the rule of the Egyptian government and NOT throw the babies into the Nile River.
Fast forward a few thousand years and head on over to Germany! A young reformer named Martin Luther has found himself in some hot water with the state authorities. He went against the wishes of the government in this case as well because he refused to go against his conscience.
In both of these examples the choice may have been an easy one to make, but that doesn’t mean the consequences were easy to live with.
Want to hear more? Check out this week’s study Politics is Driving Me Crazy: A Tale of Two Kingdoms.
Please click HERE for the Bible class slides.
You can find all of the Bible classes in our Politics series HERE.