To be a citizen is to hold a political office: not an elected office, to be sure, but an important office of public responsibility nonetheless. But what does being a citizen have to do with the Christian faith? What is the connection between one’s earthly citizenship and citizenship in God’s kingdom? Or is there none?
First, I would urge Christians to understand all of life as directly accountable to God. There is no alternative from a Christian point of view. Not only does the apostle Paul say that governments are ordained by God (Romans 13), but the whole of biblical teaching makes this clear. It is not just the church, the people of God, who are dependent on God; the entire creation depends on the Creator, and all human authority comes from God.
Some Christians interpret the passage about Caesar in Mark’s Gospel (Mark 12:13–17) to suggest that Jesus was separating human civic obligations from the obligations owed to God. But when Jesus says, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s” (Mark 12:17), he does not say that what belongs to Caesar does not belong to God. Citizens owe honor and taxes to the government (Caesar), but they do so as part of their total obligation to God.
Or, to put it another way, Caesar deserves taxes from citizens, but both Caesar and the citizens together owe all of their political/governmental responsibilities to God. Caesar deserves taxes, but God deserves everything, including the dutiful service we render to Caesar when we pay Caesar our taxes. This is why the apostles were bold, when push came to shove, to say, “We must obey God rather than men!” (Acts 5:29), even when some of those men happened to be government officials.
The error of modern secularism, therefore, is not in affirming the distinction between church and state, but rather in trying to disconnect ordinary life from God. The error is not in the revival of citizenship and the demise of top-down hierarchicalism. Rather, the mistake is in believing that the government’s accountability to citizens can be sustained only if both government and citizens disconnect themselves from God. Christians may accept the distinct, distinguishable responsibility of citizenship without imagining that it must be disconnected from the all-embracing allegiance owed to God.
Citizens of Two Realms
Citizenship in two realms is where the important connection between earthly citizenship and citizenship in God’s kingdom comes in. Fulfilling one’s earthly civic responsibilities is a duty owed to God as well as to fellow citizens. Believers who recognize God’s supreme rule in Jesus Christ and, by faith, thereby accept citizenship in God’s kingdom are people who must learn to perform their civic duties as unto the Lord.
There are correct ways and wrong ways to act as a citizen. Christians must be willing to obey God rather than earthly rulers if the rulers seek to compel an obedience that radically conflicts with obedience to God. But very often the challenge to believers is to perform their civic responsibilities constructively in ways that demonstrate their obedience as citizens in God’s kingdom. God has called us in Christ to pursue justice, to seek to live at peace with all people and to love our neighbors. In a complex society such as ours, one of the most important ways to live by this faith as a citizen in God’s kingdom is to pursue justice for all neighbors in the political community in which we hold citizenship.
When it comes to trying to hold the government accountable to its own calling before God, citizenship in a modern state becomes an extremely important calling for the average Christian citizen. Certainly one important way to hold the government accountable is through voting in regular elections. Another is to make sure that governments are held accountable to a basic law, a constitution, which they may not abrogate autocratically. The fact that these means of accountability have been built into most democratic states should be accepted with thankfulness, and we should recognize that Christian influences had something to do with their implementation.
Christians should be at the forefront of citizen actions that seek to secure accountable governments through constitutional limits and protections and through regular elections and court reviews. They should also take their civic responsibilities much further than this. Not every Christian is called to be a full-time political activist or government official. But the office of citizen gives one important responsibility nonetheless. Part of that responsibility is somewhat passive: stopping at stoplights, paying taxes and essentially heeding the laws that exist. But good citizenship, from a Christian point of view, must go beyond mere obedience to the law. Laws are not always just; times change, and reforms are required even of good laws. To serve God with heart, soul, strength and mind means to offer up all of life, including one’s civic responsibility, to God in service.
To do that, Christians must do more than merely go along with the expectations and demands of fellow citizens (even the majority of fellow citizens). Instead, Christians should pursue justice by seeking to influence governments through elections and other means, by seeking to revise unjust laws and by helping governments make the proper distinctions among state, church, family, school, business enterprises and other institutions responsible to God. Citizenship is one of the important callings Christians have in a highly differentiated social order, which in its entirety is called to accountability before God.
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Adapted from “Citizenship,” in The Complete Book of Everyday Christianity, ed. Robert Banks & R. Paul Stevens (Graceworks, 2011), 143–148, in commemoration of National Day (9 August). This essay has been edited for brevity and clarity.
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