When you bear with one another in love you are engaging in politics. When you depend on Christ to reach the world with the Gospel to see lives completely transformed… you are engaging in politics. You can’t avoid politics… and to try would be disobedient toward God. The great Martin Luther King wrote a famous letter, while sitting in the Birmingham, Alabama jail, which addressed this very subject. He said; “In the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched white churches stand on the sideline and merely mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities. In the midst of a mighty struggle to rid our nation of racial and economic injustice, I have heard so many ministers say, ‘Those are social issues with which the Gospel has no real concern.’” Let me be clear this morning, there are no social issues with which the Gospel has no real concern. All people matter to God. He has given them equal worth, equal ability, and equal love. They are created sacred in His image. Therefore, he desires equal justice for all of them, and that demands our political attention.
But we must understand this as well. Christian’s don’t live just for the welfare of mankind. We live for the Glory of God. And so our politics are going to be a lot different than the world’s. I want us to understand that while we must engage in politics to some degree we are not fighting for an earthly kingdom.