Christian Nationalism: An Impossible Human Pursuit

Christian Nationalism: An Impossible Human Pursuit

Host: Hon. Sam Rohrer

Guest: Dr. James Spencer

Note: This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program aired on 8/20/26. To listen to the podcast, click HERE.

Disclaimer: While reasonable efforts have been made to provide an accurate transcription, the following is a representation of a mechanical transcription and as such, may not be a word for word transcript. Please listen to the audio version for any questions concerning the following dialogue.

Sam Rohrer:

Hello and welcome to Stand in the Gap Today. And it’s also today’s our periodic focus we do on technology, biblical worldview. And today that portion of it applied Christianity, I’m calling it. And that’s what I do with our special guest, Dr. James Spencer. Now, Dr. Spencer is a theologian. He’s an author. He’s a host of the Thinking Christian Podcast, and he’s also president of the DL Moody Center. He’s written a number of books, including Serpents and Doves, Christians, Politics and the Art of Bearing Witness and Others. And that website for him, I’m going to give to you if you want to pursue and look further is thinkingchristian.org, thinkingchristian.org. Well, on this broadcast today and every day, we examine headline news and critical issues that are shaping our culture and government and churches in our nation primarily through the lens of a biblical and constitutional worldview.

Today’s focus is an area frequently heard in media and spoken about by some religious and political figures. And it’s a driving mentality, particularly in our current administration in Washington. Yet it’s also one greatly misunderstood by the average person and frankly, most who promote it. So what is that theme? Christian nationalism. Christian nationalism. I don’t know how you would define it, but stay with us because we will define it as we go through the program. But in a recent article, Dr. Spencer addressed a growing pattern that he’s noted among prominent leaders attempting to frame America through this lens. And while terms like Christian nation are used heavily across news networks and political rallies and church pulpits, they are rarely defined with theological clarity. Now that’s something we talk about a lot. Terms are redefined, but terms always need to be defined. And as Dr. Spencer wrote in his recent article regarding this, he said this, “The biblical use of Christian reflects a Christian sacred social order to which Christ is essential.

Describing nations, nationalism, values and cultures as Christian when Christ is not essential to them actually diminishes Christ’s authority by denying the claim that he has, not only on our lives, but on all things in heaven and in earth.” Now, today in this first segment, we’re going to address this aspect in the terms of a problem and the premise. And that is that human beings are attempting an impossible pursuit, trying to turn a fallen political state into a Christian nation. Now, all those words were carefully chosen. Stay with us as we go through that. Because to understand this breakdown, we have to first define our key terms with precision and we’re going to do that. The title I’ve chosen to frame today’s relevant program is this, Christian nationalism, an impossible human pursuit. Now that’s probably got your brain thinking a little bit as you’re listening to me right now, but stay with us again as we walk through this.

With that, James, welcome to the program. Good to have you back.

James Spencer:

Yeah. Thanks, Sam. It’s great to be here.

Sam Rohrer:

James, I’d like for you to do this first. Give a short definition of three words which you use, I use, and we’ll use in today’s program around which you framed your recent article. One, Christian, Christian nationalism, number two, and American civil religion. Define those, please.

James Spencer:

Sure. When I think about Christian from a biblical perspective, the word Christian is actually only used four times in scripture, three times in Acts and once in one Peter. And I would say it’s a theological term that really describes the individuals, the group, the various aspects of those individuals and groups, which are united to Christ by faith, submit to his divine authority, and seek to live out his commands under the power of the Holy Spirit. And so usually the way I would describe this is there’s a fundamental difference between saying something like Christian worship and Christian nation that most of us would recognize. And so we don’t go to some sort of political rally and call that Christian worship. We go to church and call that Christian worship. So it is a theological term for which Christ is essential. Christian nationalism, I would say, is a political framework and an ideology that very much seeks to merge national identity with Christian identity.

And it asserts that a nation’s legal, social and political institutions should be explicitly Christian, often utilizing civil power to preserve some sort of religious status. Now, there are many ways to define Christian nationalism. So I’m using this more narrow definition as we talk. And I do believe that it is an attempt to. It’s a bleeding into a diminishing of the distinction between the church and the state. And then finally, American civil religion. This is really a cultural consensus that is selectively borrowing biblical language. It’s borrowing biblical language, biblical symbols, and principles that are often referred to as Christians to foster national unity. All of that without requiring any sort of personal repentance or explicit submission to Jesus Christ. And so it is very much a cultural notion that uses Christian biblical religious language and tries to, again, sort of confuse and blur the distinction between the church and the nation.

Sam Rohrer:

Okay, great. Now, ladies and gentlemen, you may not have caught all of that. Remember all of it. Stay with us. We’ll further blend these and build them out. But Dr. Spencer, in your article, you point out that using the word Christian as a political brand, which you were describing there actually diminishes Christ’s authority. And I agree fully with that. But here’s the question. How did we reach the point where well-meaning believers confuse Christian American civil religion with true submission to Christ, as you were talking about there? Or maybe put it another word, how has the word Christian migrated from a spiritual description of faith in Christ with a changed Christ-like life to a, or I would say a broad political brand?

James Spencer:

Yeah, this is really interesting. There’s a sociologist named Robert Bella who’s done a lot of work on American civil religion. And one of the points that he makes, and I think he’s fairly amenable to American civil religion, he’s not, as far as I know, a Christian theologian or anything like that. He looks at this from a sociological perspective. And one of the comments he makes regarding American civil religion is that this borrowing, this selective use of Christian language, biblical language, religious language and symbology is that what it does is it creates this sort of quasi-confusion so that as American civil religious language begins to echo biblical principles, begins to echo Christian language, the general people who are underneath that don’t ever notice that there’s a merger of these two distinct entities. And so built into the American civil religion sort of aspect is this general confusion.

It’s a notion that in borrowing this language, they’re also borrowing the authority that comes along with that language, but they’re applying that authority like they’re transferring it from Christ to the nation. And so if we can say that our nation is Christian, all of a sudden our nation takes on a different sort of authority than it had before. It’s no longer a sovereign nation necessarily set up by God. It now becomes an authority in and of itself. And American civil religion plays with the language in that way to sort of make that work.

Sam Rohrer:

Okay. And with that ladies and gentlemen, stay with us. Our theme today is this, one that you’ll be interested in, I believe. And it’s this. Where am I going here? I forgot what it is. I lost my title. Stay with, we’ll be right back. Well, if you just joined us today, welcome aboard. And if you were with us just the other side, the break, you heard me stumble around a little bit. Sometimes that happens on live radio. I was going to give you the title for the program and I couldn’t find it because on my computer screen, which is what I’m looking at for my notes, the title disappeared. And so rather than to make up one, I stumbled around. So if that’s what you heard, be aware. That sometimes happens. But anyways, let’s get back into it because the title of today’s program is this, Christian Nationalism: An Impossible Human Pursuit.

And my special guest today has been with me before, Dr. James Spencer. He’s a president of the D.L. Moody Center, but he also is host of the Thinking Christian Podcast. I have a website at thinkingchristian.org. So that’s an easy one to remember, thinkingchristian.org. Well, in segment one, the last segment, we established the core problem around this theme of Christian nationals we’re talking about today. And that’s the fact that human beings are attempting an impossible task when they try to turn any earthly political state into a “Christian nation.” Now in segment two here, we’re going to turn to the root causes of this confusion, why we think that we can do that. For instance, why do so many well-meaning political and religious leaders fall into this trap of thinking that any nation or frame of government, because every government has some different type of framework, can be made Christian when we know that biblically, no such earthly kingdom can emerge and will only emerge when Christ puts down his reign or sets up his reign as king during the millennial kingdom.

Now, the primary cause for my guest that begins with serious theological and biblical missteps. He says there are certain things that are wrong, that misstep that creates this. Now in his article, Dr. Spencer points out that political leaders often invoke historic figures like, well, one often quoted is St. Augustine and his classic work, The City of God. And they argue from his work that America represents the realization of a Christian nation. At the same time, popular faith leaders frequently take Old Testament passages like the Book of Esther or Psalm 33 and other passages and apply them directly to modern American politics and current elected officials. Now, Dr. Spencer writes these words regarding this theological misstep. He says this, “Augustine saw law or justice following from love. And while true justice follows from Amordeo, the law of God, human justice follows from the spectrum of fallen loves that we possess.” He says, “A political system can make a society healthier in some ways, yet sicker in others, but it cannot bring about the transformation of the city of man into the city of God.” His point is clear.

Political systems belong to the earthly realm. They can cultivate civic good, but they can never bring about spiritual redemption. Now that should be clear to all true believers, but James, let’s go onto it. In your article, you highlight, for instance, Senator Josh Holly’s address sometime ago where he appealed to St. Augustine to argue for a Christian nation. Would you explain why you noted that while he isn’t wrong about the civic good, the benefits of American political philosophy, that he is wrong to call it quote unquote, Christian and wrongly cites Augustine’s distinction between the city of God and the city of man?

James Spencer:

Yeah. As I understand Augustine, what he’s really trying to do is he’s trying to say that the city of God emerges from or is rooted in a love for God. And the way I usually try to explain this for people is it’s not a sequential sort of action. We love God, then we love neighbor, then we love family, then we love nation. It isn’t as if we start loving God, get done with that, then move on to the next thing. It’s more like scuba diving. We’re immersed in the water and because we’re immersed, we communicate differently. We move differently. We’re aware of different things. And that’s what it is to be immersed in the love of God. And as we’re immersed in this love of God, then the way that we treat our neighbors, the way we think about our nation, the way we understand our family, all of these things fundamentally change.

That’s what Augustine is talking about when he’s talking about the city of God. Augustine does not deny that the city of man can’t be good, that it can’t gesture into or live according to and align with the good order that God has established. And he would encourage, I think, governments to try to align with a general understanding of God’s order. But there is a clear distinction because the city of man runs on a love of self. It doesn’t run on a love of God. And so it runs so that what we concern ourselves with is our own security, our own sufficiency, our own advancement. And these things are not going to lead us toward God’s order. They’re going to bend society away from it. And I think that that clarity, that distinction is really crucial because God’s people, the people in the church, are living into the city of God.

Whereas our governments are, any government of any nation, regardless of how moral, is not guided by the Holy Spirit, not the primary witness of God’s glory. And they’re always going to bend away from God’s order. Not because they’re evil or something like that, but because they love themselves and the love of God is not recalibrating how they see what’s going on in the

Sam Rohrer:

World. And we don’t have time to get into it, but the scripture talks about this current world and world system that the scripture talks about is under the control of Satan right now. That’s what Bible says. So we can’t step that aside because that makes us look forward to, I’ve already pointed the millennial kingdom when things will be different, but now they are not. Now let’s moving on there because in your article, you mentioned a couple of religious leaders. You cite examples, for instance, like Franklin Graham applying the book of Esther to modern geopolitical dynamics, put it that way. It was in reference to the president, or Robert Jeffers applying Psalm 33 directly to the United States. And here’s the question, that happens often, but what are the dangers when preachers of the word or politicians who cite their Christianity, as an example, cite covenantal scripture out of context and apply it directly to a secular modern nation?

What does that do? What’s the danger there?

James Spencer:

I think a couple of things. Number one, I think it displaces our hope. So the way I would read those texts is that these are speaking to the Christian church. And the Christian church is to embody Christ in this world. We are supposed to show the world what it looks like to live according to the way, the truth and the life. And so when we start applying these terms to a nation, what we’re really suggesting is that that nation is showcasing what it means to live according to the way, the truth and the life. And that just isn’t the case. So there’s that very basic confusion, Sam, that’s a problem. And then I would also just say that oftentimes this again gets back to that sort of inversion of authority issue. The Bible is now being used to authorize and give authority to a government.

Now the government has authority. It’s been given a scope of authority by God, but that doesn’t mean that we should give it more. It doesn’t mean that it needs more legitimacy or that that legitimacy could ever be expanded beyond what God gives it. And I think these sort of statements do that. They’re trying to over legitimize a government, expand the scope of his authority. When really what should be happening is we should be speaking into the government and saying, “You’ve exceeded your authority. You’re not recognizing that you sit under God. These things that you’re doing are departing from God’s order. We need to be a prophetic voice as opposed to a reinforcing voice.” And I think those are a couple of the problems that I see when these kind of passages are applied into the American system.

Sam Rohrer:

And don’t have much time here in this segment, but tying into that, James, is that I’ve never known a politician who, if they could, would not seek to put around them preachers. Because no matter where you go, political leaders want to have some kind of spiritual sanction. They call on somebody to morally give them a stamp of approval. In the current administration, we have a faith team. You mentioned two of them. What do they do? Well, they sanction policies. Is that their job? And frankly, I’ve had a personal disappointment when, in fact, members should be standing up and saying, “But thus say it’s the word of the Lord. This is what policy ought to look like. This is what behavior ought to look like. This is what things ought to be.” They’re quiet. But the fact that moral sanction is desired is not something new.

Even Ahab had his bailed prophets, right?

James Spencer:

And I think that that’s really sort of key to what we’re talking about here. I think there can be ways that people do that in more of a benevolent fashion. So I don’t want to just impugn motives all over the place. There may very well be a well-meaning Christian who wants the appropriate counsel of ministers around him. But I also think that oftentimes this is a feature of what we spoke about with American civil religion, that the sacred serves to justify and legitimate what a particular political actor does. And now you have sort of the tail wagging the dog where God’s order and God’s people should be speaking into this and encouraging the government to align more with God’s order. What we’re really doing is we’re serving as a sanction for almost anything that happens within the political realm.

Sam Rohrer:

And stay with us ladies and gentlemen and be right back after the break to continue our discussion on Christian nationalism. It’s an impossible human pursuit. Well, welcome back. And as we continue our discussion here today on Christian nationalism and impossible human pursuit, that’s the title I’ve given to it today. My guest is Dr. James Spencer. He is the president of the D.L. Moody Center and host of the Thinking Christian Podcast with a website at thinkingchristian.org. In segment two, last segment, we examine how theological and biblical missteps have led leaders, continue to lead leaders, to confuse earthly political structures, the building of earthly political structures with the building of the kingdom of God. Now in segment three here, right where we’re at now, we’re going to address a second root cause of this confusion. And put it this way, it’d be the sociological delusion regarding culture and morality.

Now drawing on some writings, sociologist Philip Rife, Dr. Spencer, explains in his article that human cultures attempt to translate their understanding of the sacred into secular social structures. Nobody find that. But because Western civilization was heavily influenced by Christian principles, that we know it’s true. It produced very significant, genuine social goods, put it that way, good things such as liberty and order and human dignity. Those things that we find within, for instance, our Declaration of Independence. Those are things that come out of that view. However, many evangelicals frequently make the mistake of assuming that partial cultural alignment with biblical ethics, and this is key, and Dr. Spencer will build this out more, that a partial cultural alignment with biblical ethics equals a quote unquote Christian society. Or that in my words, assuming that one political party or politician will produce a Christian society, but without intentionally leading as according to biblically defined righteousness or what it means to be a righteous leader as defined within scripture and the biblical construct where God says a demonstrated fear of God manifested with humility before God and a careful keeping of his commandments in both public and private life will lead to God’s blessing.

We leave out a lot of those things. We talk much in other programs about that. Now Dr. Spencer cautions regarding this cultural trap. He says this, “The misalignment is seldom total. There are many areas of overlap between the social goods recognized by Western culture and those recognized by Christians. While Christians need to affirm the goods, Western culture acknowledge some of those I just mentioned, but goes on to say,” We cannot settle for wholesomeness when only holiness will do. “That’s a great statement you’ve made there, Dr. Spencer. You said that civic wholesomeness can improve human society, but it can never substitute for true spiritual holiness or salvation in Christ. And that gets right to the heart of it. So here you are. In your warning, you said that we cannot settle for wholesomeness when only holiness will do. That is key. Why is civic morality or political conservatism, for instance, an insufficient substitute for true biblical holiness, which is what God links to his blessing?

James Spencer:

Yeah. I’ll describe it like this. It’s because it’s too narrow. It’s not because it’s wrong in every case. As we said, that there is an overlap between these two. Wherever we see goodness, truth and beauty in the world, that’s from God. That’s sourced from God. We need to recognize God’s reality wherever we see it. But if we narrow that reality down and we say, this is coming from the state, that the state provides this stability, that the state provides all these good things that we’re getting. And we narrow it down and we sort of bracket God out or make him less responsible or less necessary to our overall understanding of what the world is. It’s just too narrow. I think we’re talking to pastors. And so you can imagine a scenario where, let’s say you have a church and it’s a very well-funded church, but nobody ever shows up.

People just send their money in online and every Sunday when the pastor gets up to preach, the pews are empty. We would never consider that to be a complete scenario. We would never be satisfied with that, with a pastor preaching to an empty room. It narrows it down so that it’s not just about the money. The money’s a good thing. Ministries need to be funded. But we want a lot of other things to go along with that. And I think there’s an analogy there, a way of thinking about the government that is similar to that. The government provides us with very important things, but they’re not all the things that we should be wanting. And if our desires stop at only the things that the government can provide, we’re really going to be shorting ourselves and missing aspects of God’s reality that Christians really do need to be pointing to and living into.

Sam Rohrer:

And boy, we could go further right there, James, because I would say from my time in office and you, an observer and our listeners observing, that justice has been moved into the meaning of social justice. How many times do we think and we’re told that government needs to give to us healthcare, needs to give to us all these things when in fact, biblically, government’s job by God is to make sure that the family can do its job, that the church can do its job. And civil government has a very limited job. Isn’t that an amazing thing? Our founders talked about limited government. And many times people today will talk about it, but yet they are fighting for an expanded government doing things, providing things that was never the intention of God. Now let’s go into this. How can Christians appreciate, defend, and encourage the genuine civic goods, that liberty to freedom those things, the benefits that we have come to enjoy so richly here in the West generally without mistaking those human, I’m going to say temporal benefits in actually replacing the gospel?

James Spencer:

I think the trick here is to do three things at once. We need to affirm the goods that we see. So when government does something good, we need to affirm that. We need to say, “Hey, that was a good thing.” We also need to critique or correct and say, “That was a good thing. And yet, look at these things that are yet left undone.” We need to make sure the government doesn’t get to overclaim what it’s doing. Even as it does something good, there are other things that are left undone. And so we need to continue to press toward that. And I would say the final thing that we really need to do is we need to point beyond the goodness that we’re seeing to the God that is the source of that goodness. This is our gospel proclamation. When we see goodness, truth and beauty in the world, we want to make sure that people don’t get so enamored with the gift that they forget the giver.

And so those three things, we need to affirm goodness, truth, and beauty when we see it. We need to offer correction and critique when necessary. And we always need to be pointing beyond goodness, truth, and beauty to the God that is their source.

Sam Rohrer:

And James, that goes right back to what we’ve talked about here many times before. When God took the children of Israel into the land, the promised land, and said, “I’m going to give you all these blessings.” He made it very, very clear. Remember that I gave you these things. Instilling the element of gratefulness to God. The fact of having to remind children and grandchildren what God has done so that they would not embrace idolatry because Deuteronomy 28, at which point they thought that, “Well, what we have, we did ourselves.” God says, “I’m fine. I’m going to shift from blessing to cursing, and you’ll lose what I gave you.” So it goes exactly where you’re going there. Now, here’s the last question. How does American sit? Well, religion, which you defined in the first segment, actually allow people to feel comfortable with scriptural values, talking about things that are good and biblical, but at the same time, still denying Christ’s personal authority over their lives.

And I’m going to say the fact that you can get and have things that God gives without living a life of holiness, that actually is God’s requirement to get it in the first place.

James Spencer:

Yeah. I mean, I think this is really where the rubber meets the road and that merger of American national life with religious and Christian language becomes deeply problematic because at times it can seem like the government is what God has given us to work temporal salvation. And when we get enamored with that idea, we quickly start to forget God. Just like you’re talking about from Deuteronomy eight there. We start to appreciate all the things that the government has given us that are truly good things, but we stop looking beyond those good things back to the God who is their source. And so we become complacent. We start wondering why it is that the government isn’t doing more for us. And we start sort of pushing buttons and pulling levers that will try to make the government produce what it’s incapable of producing because really goodness, truth and beauty comes from God.

And so our mechanisms of action are always faithfulness and obedience and discipleship, but all Oftentimes what we try is we try to manipulate a system that we’ve constructed to do better than it can do. And so what we need to do as I think what American civil religion does is it pushes us toward the wrong mechanisms. It gives us this inclination to push the wrong button and pull the wrong lever, as opposed to really deeply leaning into discipleship and recognizing that this world may not be fixed. We may not be able to fix this world, but that is not our responsibility. Our responsibility is to live faithfully in a world so broken that only God can fix

Sam Rohrer:

It. Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve talked about so many times, how did Solomon end up his life? Fear God and keep his commandments. For this is the whole duty of man and all through scripture. Fear God, fear God, fear God. Be grateful to God. Keep his commandments. God says, “You do that, you will see my blessing.” All right. Those were God’s words. Stay with us back for our biblical solution. What do we do here now doing these things? Well, if you haven’t been with us from the beginning of the program, I encourage you strongly to go to our website, standinthegapradio.com or on our free app, Stand in the Gap. And you can access this program as well as all of our programs, the Minute Program, which you just heard in the break just before we started this last segment. Stand in the Gap weekend program and this daily program, Stand in the Gap Today.

You can search there by guest, by date, and there’s a number of things that you can do. And now, as of the last few years, couple of years, you will also find a transcript available there for you, which is handy to be able to actually review, read through while you listen to the program again. Always, there’s more information on here than physically possible for anybody to write down or to remember. For most people, you might be different, but most people can’t do that. But that is an easy way to be able to help. All right. Now, as we go into our final segment here again, just a reminder, the theme today has been this, Christian nationalism and impossible human pursuit. So if you’ve been with us, you may have heard things that maybe made you think a little bit, hopefully. Maybe think differently. Thinking differently is never our goal, but thinking biblically is our goal.

And I hope that that has happened. My guest today, Dr. James Spencer, been with me before. He’s the president of the D.L. Moody Center. He also hosts his own podcast now, Thinking Christian, website at thinkingchristian.org. Right now, in our previous segments, we stated the problem and we defined the terms. That was in segment one. We diagnose both the theological missteps for calling them and the sociological delusions that lead people to mistake earthly civil order or political movements for the kingdom of God. We did that in the last two segments. Now, in this last segment, we’re going to turn to the biblical solution. So we’re again, following problem, cause, solution. And it’s this, living faithfully as ambassadors and sojourners. There are a number of ways that as believers, we know we are described in scripture. Just picked out two of them here, ambassadors and sojourners. Over my lifetime, I have come to understand biblical truth and human civic duty in a more clear way, having been a preacher of the word and serving as a minister of God in government for many, many years.

I know this. By physical birth, I am, you are no doubt likely a citizen of our earthly nation. Wherever you were born, you’re a citizen of that nation. And with that comes very specific civic duties. But by new birth, true Christians, true believers, of which there’s only a small percentage in this country, according to George Barta’s surveys, only about 4% of the 70% of people in America who describe themselves as Christians would actually manifest true Christianity. That is in part, part of the issue we’re talking about. But that being the case, but by new birth, true believers enter God’s family with eternal citizenship in a heavenly kingdom. And when Christ returns, and he will, to establish his millennial kingdom, believers from all ages, regardless of their temporal homeland, will live out that realization together in fullness. And it’s this eternal reality that must govern our lives today.

We are called to serve as ambassadors, a political position, put it that way, representing Christ in his kingdom, his word, his commandments, and all the while pointing people to the worship of God of heaven. That’s why we’re here, right? All the while, we are recognizing that we are sojourners, merely passing through. Just as Christ did in his first coming here, he was here for a divine purpose, but for a limited time. We live righteously, which by definition means emulating Christ in all things. We seek the welfare of our earthly home while praying, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And in concluding his article, Dr. Spencer points to our practical calling as faithful guides. And he says this, “Christians recognize that like the Ethiopian eunuch, the goods derived from a nation’s welfare cannot be understood without the help of a guide.

In seeking the welfare of the city,” that’s an Old Testament command. “Christians must learn to contribute solutions to geopolitical issues that are appropriate to a Christian sacred social order. “That’s what we do. That’s our job here. Now, Dr. Spencer, from your perspective, how does understanding our dual identity as heavenly citizens and earthly ambassadors help us to navigate our civic responsibilities without falling into the trap of making an idol out of political power? And like Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch be a guide to others, to the worship of God and God alone?

James Spencer:

Yeah. I think number one, with the analogy between Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch, what I’m really pointing to is Philip brings an expanded vision of what’s going on in the world to that conversation. He has a deep understanding of Christ. He understands the resurrection. He’s had the benefit of sort of growing up within this sort of teaching of what the world is and what the apostles understand. And so when he comes to the Ethiopian Eunuch, I don’t think the Ethiopian Eunuch is just sitting there reading the Isaiah scroll and going, “I can’t read these words.” What he’s trying to understand is what it’s actually saying. What does it mean? He can read it, he can understand it, but what does it really mean? And Christ is crucial to that, and that’s what Philip gives in Eunuch. I think that’s the same thing that we’re doing.

We’re walking along the same roads as everyone else. The difference is that when we look out and we see a tree, we see God’s creation. When we look out and we see technological marvels and different things like that, we see these things in a different way. And that’s what it means for us to be heavenly citizens. We’re living within another society that it places a different sort of meaning on everything that we see around us. That’s a deep biblical and theological engagement with the world, that Christians have a responsibility to cultivate. And then as we’re running up against other people who are just out there in the world, we’re helping them understand what it is that they’re looking at. We’re helping them reframe what civic responsibility looks like. We’re helping them understand how we avoid the trap of idol making and political power. We’re helping them understand what it means to serve as a president, not become a president to serve yourself.

These are all the different sorts of things that Christians understand because we have an expanded vision of reality and need to convey to a watching world.

Sam Rohrer:

I think that’s excellent. We don’t have very much time left here. I’d like to ask you to close in prayer. Could you do that, James? I’ve never asked you to do that on this program, but I think everything we’ve talked about, we need to implore the God of heaven and the Holy Spirit to help those who have ears to hear, to walk through these things we talked about. Can you close?

James Spencer:

Happy to. Lord, as we close this program out, we just ask that all of your people, everyone who calls Jesus Lord, would allow their political activity, their civic engagement, their love for family, for neighbor, for others to emerge out of a deep and abiding love for you. Help us to be so discipled that we can’t help but do this well in a world that has fallen and broken and needs to see who you are through your people. And so we pray, Lord, that we would recommit ourselves to you deeply, that we would seek to follow you and your son according to the pattern he has shown us, and that we would be a salt and light witness to a world that desperately needs to understand that they are under the authority of the triune God and that that is a blessed situation. We pray these things in Jesus’ name.

Sam Rohrer:

Amen. Amen. Amen. Thank you so much, Dr. James Spencer. Ladies and gentlemen, his website that you can find Thinking Christian, thinkingchristian.org. And with that, thank you for being with us today. Go back and listen to the program again, and if you’re inclined, send it along to a friend. Let them consider these things as well. Very relevant, very practical. There’s nothing that we can do more than point people to the God of heaven, living in the fear of God, walking in obedience to our God.