Thread by @Vicar1973

A 🧵 on nations and Christian nationalism:

The gospel creates unity amongst all believers; the gospel unites all who are in Christ into one people, one family, one nation. Jesus prays for the unity of his people to be manifested in the world (John 17), and that oneness is always a spiritual reality, even if our sin sometimes obscures it. There is one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church, as the creed says. This oneness means all believers are part of the same body; catholicity means this one church is universal, embracing all believers in all times and places. The gospel includes the reconciliation of different nations and people groups in Christ (Eph. 2:11ff), with the result that nations can beat their swords into plowshares (Isa. 2).

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We must also affirm that the gospel does not annihilate creational or providential structures like distinct families and nations, but rather sanctifies them. The gospel does not obliterate the distinction between my household and the other households that make up the membership of my local church. The gospel links us together in Christ but does not negate the integrity of each natural family. My household continues to be a real household, even as my household is incorporated into the larger household of God.

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Likewise, the gospel does not negate nationalities. Nations in a group of Christianized nations would each retain their own unique identity (language, borders, culture), even as those nations are linked together in a wider network of nations we’d call Christendom. Yes, a group of Christianized and discipled nations will share many things in common because of their common submission to Christ, but they will also bring their *peculiar* treasures into Christ’s kingdom (Isa. 60).

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In other words, Christendom - a collection of Christian nations - is not the same kind of program we see with secular globalism today. Indeed, it is fundamentally antithetical to it. The gospel does not destroy cultures but sanctifies and transforms them. Globalism dehumanizes; the gospel rehumanizes. Globalism destroys diversity for the sake of unity; the gospel sanctifies diversity for the sake of unity. Globalism is totalitarian; the gospel is liberating.

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Within a Christian nation, the gospel will serve as the foundation of civil unity. A Christian nation, after all, is a people who seek to share not just temporal goods but the eternal good of Christ’s kingdom. A Christian nation is not a nation in which every individual is a Christian, but a nation that is committed to conforming its corporate life, it social customs, its laws and culture, to the rule of Christ as much as possible, recognizing that civil government, the church, and the family each have their own spheres and their own roles to play.

But this does not mean that two Christian nations will become identical any more than two Christian families are identical. The same principles and truths can be worked out and applied in various ways. A Christian nation is simply a nation that recognizes the truths that Christ is Lord, the church is his bride, and the Bible is his Word.

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Note that Pentecost in Acts 2 is not the reversal of Babel but the sanctification of Babel. At Pentecost, the various ethnicities do not revert to speaking one language (= Babelic globalism) but rather each hears the gospel in his own tongue (= distinct Christian nations). The point of Pentecost is not to recreate the Babelic situation, where all of humanity is smushed together into one people with one language. Rather, the point of Pentecost is to bring about the transformation of those nations downstream from Babel. History never goes backwards, it only goes forwards, and Petencost does not undo Babel but take the gospel to the nations formed in the aftermath of a Babel. The point is not for all of humanity to speak one language again, but for the gospel to be spoken in a multitude of languages.

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There is a kind of global oneness promised in the Abrahamic covenant (Genesis 12) and reiterated in other texts (Isaiah 2, Psalm 2, Daniel 4, etc.), and of course these promises undergird the church’s Great Commission. But the discipling of the nations does not eradicate nations, it just transforms and sanctifies them. The Great Commission does not make us faceless, placeless “global citizens.” Rather, the it makes each nation Christian in a distinctive way. Thus: the Christianization of China makes the Chinese more fully and uniquely Chinese; the Christianization of Brazil will make Brazilians more fully and uniquely Brazilian; the Christianization of Canada will make Canadians more fully and uniquely Canadian; etc. The eschatological vision for the nations is one of unity *and* diversity, of many unique people groups joined together as one in Christ, with the oneness and manyness equally ultimate.

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